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The Effect of Peer Comparison Emails on Oncologists' Documentation of Cancer Stage

NCT04298762 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 56

Last updated 2020-03-06

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Documenting cancer stage is the most important determinant of treatment approach and survival for cancer patients. However, oncologists do not routinely document a patient's cancer stage in the structured field in electronic health records. This quality improvement pilot study evaluated the impact of sending an email to physicians at a cancer center of a large academic hospital with individualized data on their rates of cancer stage documentation using a structured field. The investigators assessed patient-level documentation and physician-level rates of staging documentation over 15 months including a three-month pre-period, a six-month pilot phase and a six-month follow-up period. The investigators also estimated staging documentation rates separately for each physician's new versus established patients.

Conditions

Interventions

OTHER

No peer comparison email

The comparison group received no email communication on their cancer stage documentation activity.

OTHER

Peer comparison email

The intervention group received three separate emails with individualized data on their cancer stage documentation activity in the previous 1-3 months. The email described the number and percent of attributed patients for whom cancer stage was documented, and included a figure showing their staging documentation rate compared to their peers.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Massachusetts General Hospital

    collaborator OTHER

  • Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Anna Sinaiko, PhD · Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2018-07-01
Primary Completion
2019-09-30
Completion
2019-09-30

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04298762 on ClinicalTrials.gov