Improving Laboratory Follow-up by Delivering an Enhanced Medication List to Outpatient Physician Practices

The investigators plan to develop a process to create an Enhanced Medication List. The INPC (Indiana Network for Patient Care) already obtains histories of medications dispensed by pharmacies from several sources: pharmacy benefit managers, RxHub, insurance companies, Medicaid, SureScripts, Wishard Health Services. The investigators will collect all the medication data available through the INPC for an individual patient. The investigators will enhance this medication list by including medication categories, improving the structure and appearance, displaying results of relevant laboratory tests, and adding decision support reminders. The investigators will test the value of such an "Enhanced Medication List" by providing it to outpatient physician practices (through the DOCS4DOCS clinical messaging service, or as a fax), preferably on the day that the patient has an office visit with the physician. The investigators will determine whether this intervention improves patient care: whether there are higher rates of recommended laboratory follow-up monitoring as a result; whether there are lower rates of harmful drug-drug interactions. The investigators will also seek the opinions of physicians regarding the benefit of this intervention.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Medication Histories in Outpatient Clinic Patients
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: Medication History was printed

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 5256
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Indiana
    • Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, 46202
      • Regenstrief Institute

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 19 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• outpatient clinic patient visits

Exclusion Criteria:

• Age 18 and under

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Intervention (with Medication History); these patient visits generated a medication history	Other: Medication History was printed

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Count of medications (on a patient's medication list) for which recent (within 12 months) laboratory test monitoring is missing.	The hypothesis is that the intervention (a medication history printed for the patient) would help the physician identify incomplete monitoring of laboratory test results for a subset of medications. (For example, Potassium test levels should be obtained every 12 months for patients using diuretics, according to NCQA HEDIS guidelines.) With time, the intervention group should have less medications for which laboratory test results are incomplete. Therefore, the intervention group should have less medications with decision support reminders warning of incomplete laboratory test monitoring.	Laboratory tests during the previous 12 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Indiana University

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): September 28, 2007
• Primary Completion (Actual): October 1, 2011
• Study Completion (Actual): October 1, 2011

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: September 23, 2010
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: September 23, 2010
• First Posted (Estimate): September 24, 2010

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimate): March 10, 2023
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 8, 2023
• Last Verified: March 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 0710-59