Reducing the Unnecessary Use of Heavily Marketed Medications: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Use of Sleep Medications
• Interventions: Behavioral: Computerized alerts; Behavioral: Alerts Plus Detailing

• Registration Number: NCT00788346
• Lead Sponsor: VA Boston Healthcare System

Brief Summary

Prescribing decisions by clinicians are often thought to be simple: a patient's clinical problem leads a prescriber to choose the optimal treatment. However, many factors other than the patient's condition affect prescribing decisions, including the marketing of pharmaceuticals. Clinicians are subjected to direct "detailing" by representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, advertisements in medical journals and requests for specific treatments from patients, who are increasingly exposed to direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. These influences, often based on biased or inaccurate information, contribute to a variety of problems in prescribing, including the unnecessary use of expensive, heavily marketed medications.

Overcoming these influences requires innovative approaches. The movement toward widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and electronic prescribing presents new opportunities to educate both clinicians and patients at the time of medication prescribing. This project, endorsed by the AHRQ-supported Centers for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs; www.certs.hhs.gov) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), aims to test the effectiveness of computerized prescribing alerts and state-of-the-art educational outreach to reduce the unnecessary use of heavily marketed medications. A second goal is to improve clinicians' knowledge of industry marketing practices, so that they can more effectively assess information provided by drug companies. Thus, the study has two specific aims:

Specific Aim 1: To assess whether computerized prescribing alerts linked electronically to patient educational material can reduce prescribing of heavily marketed medications.

Specific Aim 2: To assess whether group academic detailing increases clinicians' knowledge about industry marketing practices and increases the effect of prescribing alerts.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2007-03
• Primary Completion: 2008-03
• Study Completion: 2008-03
• Status Verified: 2008-11
• Study First Submitted: 2008-11-07
• Study First Submitted QC: 2008-11-07
• Study First Posted: 2008-11-10
• Last Update Submitted: 2012-12-19
• Last Update Posted: 2012-12-20

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 257

Inclusion Criteria

• Internal medicine clinicians

Exclusion Criteria

• none

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Computerized Alerts	Computerized alerts	Computerized Clinical Decision Support to clinician at the time of prescribing
Alerts PLUS Detailing	Alerts Plus Detailing	Computerized Clinical Decision Support to clinician at the time of prescribing PLUS one group academic detailing session

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
proportion of prescriptions for hypnotic medications that were heavily marketed medications (study medications). Hypnotic medications were defined as the study medications intervention plus zolpidem and trazodone.	one year

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care; 🇺🇸 Boston, Massachusetts, United States