Nudging Guideline-concordant Antibiotic Prescribing Using Public Commitments

July 5, 2017 updated by: Jason Doctor, University of Southern California
Inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory infections (ARIs) persists despite decades of intervention efforts. Negative outcomes of inappropriate antibiotics include increased costs of care, adverse drug reactions, and rising prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. To address this public health problem, we apply the principles of commitment and consistency in an effort to influence clinician decision-making through the implementation of a low-cost behavioral "nudge" in the form of a simple public commitment device. Clinicians were asked to post in their exam room a signed letter indicating their commitments to reducing inappropriate antibiotic use for ARIs. Our hypothesis is that clinicians displaying the poster-sized commitment letters will decrease their inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for ARIs as compared to clinicians in the control condition (with no posted letter).

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

14

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

  • United States
    • California
      • Los Angeles, California, United States, 90027
        • Queenscare Family Clinics

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:

  • Medical professionals licensed to provide care and prescribe medications (including antibiotics)
  • Treating adult patients (18 years of age and older) from 5 Los Angeles community clinics

Exclusion Criteria:

  • none

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

  • Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Posted commitment letter
The poster-sized (18x24 inches) commitment letter, written at the 8th grade reading-level and displayed in English and Spanish, emphasize clinician commitment to guidelines for appropriate antibiotic prescribing and explain why antibiotics are not appropriate in many cases. These letters, featuring clinician photographs and signatures, are displayed in clinician exam rooms for a 16-week period.
Other: Posted commitment letter
No Intervention: Control
Usual care with no posted letters.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Inappropriate Antibiotic Prescribing for Patients With Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI)
Time Frame: up to 12 months post intervention
Using data from electronic health records, we will calculate clinician antibiotic prescribing rates for antibiotic-inappropriate ARI diagnoses: acute nasopharyngitis (ICD-9 460.x), acute laryngitis without obstruction (465.8), acute laryngopharyngitis (465.0), acute bronchitis (466.x), acute upper respiratory infections of other multiple sites (465.8), acute upper respiratory infections not otherwise specified (465.9), bronchitis not specified as acute or chronic (490.x), non-streptococcal pharyngitis (462.xx), and influenza with other respiratory manifestations (487.1). To control for temporal trends in antibiotic prescribing and provider-fixed effects, we will fit a logistic mixed effects model that predicts inappropriate antibiotic prescribing as a function of study arm and an indicator for baseline versus intervention period (a difference-in-differences regression).
up to 12 months post intervention

Collaborators and Investigators

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

Sponsor

University of Southern California

Collaborators

National Institutes of Health (NIH)
National Institute on Aging (NIA)

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.

General Publications

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, 2012

Primary Completion (Actual)

May 1, 2012

Study Completion (Actual)

May 1, 2013

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

January 10, 2013

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 10, 2013

First Posted (Estimate)

January 11, 2013

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

August 10, 2017

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

July 5, 2017

Last Verified

July 1, 2017

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • USCalifornia
  • RC4AG039115 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

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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