A Trial to De-prescribe Inappropriate Medications in the Community Dwelling Elderly (D-PRESCRIBE)

January 23, 2018 updated by: Cara Tannenbaum, Centre de Recherche de l'Institut Universitaire de Geriatrie de Montreal

Developing Pharmacist-led Research to Educate and Sensitive Community Residents to the Inappropriate Prescription Burden in the Elderly

The objective of this trial is to test the beneficial effect of a pharmacist-initiated knowledge transfer intervention to both patients and prescribers on the discontinuation of inappropriate prescriptions, compared to usual care. The investigators hypothesize that the pharmacist-led intervention will reduce inappropriate prescriptions by at least 20% over 6-months compared to usual care. The intervention consists of simultaneously educating consumers and providing physicians with an evidence-based pharmaceutical opinion on inappropriate prescriptions.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

600

Phase

  • Phase 4

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

65 years and older (Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Men and women 65 years of age and older (no upper age limit)
  • Individuals for whom prescription claims derive from only one pharmacy identifier
  • Chronic consumption (> 3 month claims) of one of the target inappropriate prescriptions. (benzodiazepine/non benzodiazepine hypnotic, long-acting sulfonylurea oral hypoglycemic agents, anticholinergic agents (in the form of first-generation antihistamines) or Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs [NSAIDs] )
  • Patients who are willing to participate in the study.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • A probable diagnosis of dementia (persons without the capacity to provide informed consent), as determined by a) a prescription for memantine or a cholinesterase inhibitor; b) report from a caregiver or family-member; or c) a baseline screening score on the Folstein Mini-Mental State Exam < 24
  • Inability to understand and or communicate in English and/or French
  • Patients living in a long-term care facility
  • Concomitant use of any antipsychotic medication

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: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Pharmacist-led educational intervention
Participants will receive an educational brochure on an inappropriate prescription they are currently taking from their pharmacists. Participants' physicians will receive an evidence-based pharmaceutical opinion for the same medication.
Behavioral: Pharmacist-led educational intervention
1) Educational material to participants in the form of a written educational brochure on inappropriate prescriptions that was developed and tested during the EMPOWER study. 2) Evidence-based pharmaceutical opinions sent to the treating physicians.
No Intervention: Control
Participants in the control group will be wait-listed and observed for 6 months prior to receiving the intervention.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Complete discontinuation of inappropriate prescriptions.
Time Frame: 6 months
Provincial prescription insurance claims will be used to measure whether the inappropriate prescription has been discontinued in the intervention and control group at 6-months. Prescription data contain information on all dispensed prescriptions including drug name, dispensation date, dosage, drug form, duration and quantity of the drug dispensed, as well as the license number of the physician who wrote the prescription. Discontinuation of an inappropriate prescription will be defined as the lack of a claims renewal for that medication during a minimum of three or more consecutive months (with no subsequent renewals) during the nine months following receipt of the intervention.
6 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
The frequency, timing and type of pharmaceutical opinions sent by the pharmacist to the patient's primary care physician.
Time Frame: 6 months
The occurrence and delivery date of any pharmaceutical opinion sent to the patient's physician will be ascertained by the presence of a pharmacist billing claim recorded within 6 months after randomization of pharmacies to the intervention group. The type of opinion (evidence-based example provided by the research team vs customized by the pharmacist) will be ascertained by obtaining a photocopied paper copy of the pharmaceutical opinion from the patient's pharmacy record at the end of the trial (by law, the pharmacist must keep a copy in the patient's dossier). The dates of the paper copy will be matched to the date of the billing registered in the billing database to validate that the latter relates to the drug under study.
6 months
Effect of the pharmaceutical opinion on the prescriber's behaviour.
Time Frame: 6 months
Pharmacists will be provided with a "study response card" to accompany any pharmaceutical opinion sent to a physician for study patients with inappropriate prescriptions. The "response card" will ask the physician to endorse one of the following three options: 1) I agree with the proposed recommendation and have signed the prescription recommendation you have provided to discontinue or substitute the inappropriate prescription 2) I will discuss with the patient at the next visit; or 3) no change required. The physician will be asked to fax back the response card to the pharmacist. A copy of all response cards received by the pharmacist will be collected by the research team at the end of the trial. The pharmacist will also be asked whether the physician acknowledged the pharmaceutical opinion in any other way. Lack of acknowledgment of the pharmaceutical opinion by the physician will be coded as a non-response.
6 months
Patient-physician encounters to discuss inappropriate prescriptions.
Time Frame: 6 months
Patient visits to their primary care provider within the 6-months post-intervention will be ascertained by physician billing claims. Visits to physicians where discussions about inappropriate prescriptions occurred will be determined by patient self-report during the 6-month semi-structured telephone follow-up interview by asking whether patients met with their physician to discuss their prescriptions and what happened during these encounters. We will also query any phone call discussions with physician on this subject and conversations with pharmacists to discuss prescription changes.
6 months

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Change in risk perception around inappropriate prescriptions
Time Frame: Baseline, 6 months
Baseline and post-intervention evaluation of participant's, pharmacist's and physician's beliefs about the risks associated with certain inappropriate prescriptions, as listed on the Beers Criteria of inappropriate medication in the elderly.
Baseline, 6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

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

Sponsor

Centre de Recherche de l'Institut Universitaire de Geriatrie de Montreal

Collaborators

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Cara Tannenbaum, MD, MSc, Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal

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

March 1, 2014

Primary Completion (Actual)

October 1, 2017

Study Completion (Actual)

December 1, 2017

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

January 31, 2014

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 31, 2014

First Posted (Estimate)

February 3, 2014

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

January 25, 2018

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 23, 2018

Last Verified

January 1, 2018

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • CIHR 201303MOP-299872-KTR

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

UNDECIDED

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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