Integrating Targeted MedlinePlus Health Prescriptions Into Clinic Practice Workflow

September 29, 2016 updated by: University of Missouri-Columbia

The specific aim of this proposed project is to implement a standard process for integrating MedlinePlus health information prescriptions into the clinic workflow.

Hypothesis 1: Individuals in the intervention group who receive tailored email health information with provider selected MedlinePlus links and added commentary for patient specific conditions will be more likely to seek information / use MedlinePlus compared with individuals in the control group.

Hypothesis 2: Individuals in the intervention group who receive tailored email health information with provider selected MedlinePlus links and added commentary for patient specific conditions will be more satisfied with the information received compared with individuals in the control group.

Study Overview

Detailed Description

Providing patient education in an outpatient practice can be challenging in part due to the variety of patient medical conditions and the quantity of materials needed. Increasingly, electronic resources such as those found on the internet have the potential to provide easily accessible needed information. However, clinicians do not have the time to assemble a list of websites for their patients and even if they did, the quality of information varies greatly and would require close screening. MedlinePlus is a free National Library of Medicine sponsored website that features health information on hundreds of conditions with all information carefully screened for quality standards by expert librarians. We will conduct a pilot study to seamlessly integrate provider-customized MedlinePlus health education prescriptions for specific conditions into the normal clinic workflow to motivate patients to access and expand their use of MedlinePlus to benefit their health. As HIV prevention/education is very important, we will include the HIV clinic as well as a general internal medicine clinic.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

224

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

    • Missouri
      • Columbia, Missouri, United States, 65211
        • University of Missouri, Department of Internal Medicine

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • To be included in the study population, patients must also be seen by their physician for one of the 21 target health conditions (Allergic Rhinitis, Asthma, Back Pain, Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy, Bursitis, Depression/Anxiety, Diabetes Mellitus, Esophageal Reflux, HIV, Hyperlipidemia, Hypertension, Insomnia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Obesity, Osteoporosis (senile), Shoulder Pain, Sinusitis, Symptomatic Menopause, Urinary Incontinence, Urinary Tract Infection, Vaginitis) and be willing to provide an email address.
  • Patients will be included only once.
  • All patients in the intervention and the control group will receive the survey.
  • All physicians and staff at the Fairview Clinic and HIV Clinic will be invited to complete the physician or staff survey.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • No email address

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Allocation: Non-Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Survey
Control group participants are sent a survey within one week of clinic visit
Experimental: Health Information Prescription
Health Information Prescription is emailed to participants within 24 hours of clinic visit.
The patient education materials will consist of approximately 21 topics representing some of the most common conditions seen at the Fairview Internal Medicine Clinic. Twenty-one e-mails, one per topic, will be created by Fairview physicians to be distributed to selected clinic patients. There will be a standard e-mail for each condition with a specific link to MedlinePlus. To create the targeted health information topic email, the physician will review the information available at MedlinePlus. The physician will then select several links of appropriate information and, using the template, will write a short annotation on each link.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
health information experiences of the patient
Time Frame: approximately one week following clinic appointment
approximately one week following clinic appointment

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
clinician feedback on the health information prescription process
Time Frame: midpoint and conclusion of the study
midpoint and conclusion of the study

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Robert Hodge, MD, University of Missouri-Columbia

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

February 1, 2008

Primary Completion (Actual)

March 1, 2009

Study Completion (Actual)

September 1, 2009

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

February 22, 2008

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 5, 2008

First Posted (Estimate)

March 13, 2008

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimate)

September 30, 2016

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 29, 2016

Last Verified

September 1, 2016

More Information

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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