Delivery of Preventive Services in Primary Care

The multi-component translational intervention that we plan to test includes medical record audits with feedback and benchmarking, academic detailing by an opinion leader including information from literature review plus the advice of local exemplars, a practice facilitator, who will work with the practices over a six-month period, and an IT application that provides decision-support, prompts, and reminders to office staff and patients.

The proposed project will be a randomized controlled trial of a multi-component strategy designed to facilitate the incorporation into primary care practices of three office management components known to increase preventive service delivery rates: 1) nurse standing orders; 2) special immunization/ preventive services "clinics;" and 3) recall and reminder systems. Twenty-four practices, all members of a primary care practice-based research network, will be enrolled and randomized to receive the complete intervention or performance feedback with benchmarking only. The primary outcomes will be number of management components implemented. Characteristics of clinicians and practices that are associated with greater or lesser success in implementing the three strategies and barriers encountered will also be examined, and we will measure and compare rates of selected immunizations and preventive services delivered.

The specific aims for this project are to:

1. Determine the effectiveness of a multi-component translational intervention on adoption of three strategies known to increase delivery of preventive services: nurse standing orders, a reminder/recall system (preferably PSRS), and special immunization and/or preventive services clinics. The intervention will include: a) performance feedback and benchmarking; b) training of clinicians and office staff in principles of effective preventive services (enhanced academic detailing by a physician opinion leader); c) practice enhancement assistants to facilitate office system changes; and d) an IT application that provides prompts and reminders to office staff, clinicians, and patients.
2. Document contextual factors and barriers to the adoption of the three strategies and their impact on the intervention.
3. Measure the impact of the intervention on rates of delivery of the following preventive services: DtaP#4, MMR#1, and HepB#3 in 2-3 year olds, and pneumococcal immunization, colorectal cancer screening, and mammography in adults 50 - 75 years of age.