A controlled trial to improve delivery of preventive care: physician or patient reminders? A computer-generated reminder system improves physician compliance with diabetes preventive care guidelines. A randomized trial of electronic clinical reminders to improve quality of care for diabetes and coronary artery disease. Can just-in-time, evidence-based "reminders" improve pain management among home health care nurses and their patients? Reminders to physicians from an introspective computer medical record. A two-year randomized trial. Patients and computers as reminders to screen for diabetes in family practice. Randomized-controlled trial. Use of a computer to detect and respond to clinical events: its effect on clinician behavior. Effect of enhanced feedback and brief educational reminder messages on laboratory test requesting in primary care: a cluster randomised trial. Effect of mailed reminders on the response rate in surveys among patients in general practice.
To improve the delivery of preventive care in a medical clinic, a controlled trial was conducted of two interventions that were expected to influence delivery of preventive services differently, depending on level of initiative required of the physician or patient to complete a service.
                A prospective, controlled trial of five-months' duration.
                A university hospital-based, general medical clinic.
                Thirty-nine junior and senior medical residents who saw patients in stable clinic teams throughout the study.
                A computerized reminder system for physicians and a patient questionnaire and educational hand-out on preventive care.
                Delivery of five of six audited preventive services improved significantly after the interventions were introduced. The computerized reminder alone increased completion rates of services that relied primarily on physician initiative; the questionnaire alone increased completion rate of the service that depended more on patient compliance as well as on some physician-dependent services. Both interventions used together were slightly less effective in improving performance of physician-dependent services than the computerized reminder used alone.
                These interventions can improve the delivery of preventive care but they differ in their impacts on physician and patient behaviors. Overall, the computer reminder was the more effective intervention. Computerized reminder systems have been shown to be effective in improving physician compliance with preventive services guidelines. Very little has been published about the use of computerized reminders for preventive care in diabetes. We implemented a computer-generated reminder system for diabetes care guidelines in a randomized controlled study in the outpatient clinics of 35 internal medicine residents at the University of Utah and Salt Lake Veterans Affairs Hospitals. After a six month study period, compliance with the recommended care significantly improved in both the intervention group that received patient-specific reminders about the guidelines (38.0% at baseline, 54.9% at follow-up) and the control group that received a nonspecific report (34.6% at baseline, 51.0% at follow-up). There was no significant difference between the two groups. Both clinic sites showed similar improvement over baseline levels of compliance. Residents who completed encounter forms used by the system showed a significantly greater improvement in compliance than those who did not complete encounter forms (19.7% vs. 7.6%, p = 0.006). The improvements in guideline compliance were seen in all areas of diabetes preventive care studied, and significant improvements were seen with recommended items from the medical history, physical exam, laboratory testing, referrals, and patient education. The use of encounter forms by the providers significantly improved documented compliance with the guidelines in almost all categories of preventive care. These results suggest that computerized reminder systems improve compliance with recommended care more by facilitating the documentation of clinical findings and the ordering of recommended procedures than by providing the clinician with patient-specific information about guideline compliance status. Further study is needed to understand the implications of these findings to the development of future computerized reminder systems for chronic diseases such as diabetes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of an integrated patient-specific electronic clinical reminder system on diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) care and to assess physician attitudes toward this reminder system.
                We enrolled 194 primary care physicians caring for 4549 patients with diabetes and 2199 patients with CAD at 20 ambulatory clinics. Clinics were randomized so that physicians received either evidence-based electronic reminders within their patients' electronic medical record or usual care. There were five reminders for diabetes care and four reminders for CAD care.
                The primary outcome was receipt of recommended care for diabetes and CAD. We created a summary outcome to assess the odds of increased compliance with overall diabetes care (based on five measures) and overall CAD care (based on four measures). We surveyed physicians to assess attitudes toward the reminder system.
                Baseline adherence rates to all quality measures were low. While electronic reminders increased the odds of recommended diabetes care (odds ratio [OR] 1.30, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.01-1.67) and CAD (OR 1.25, 95% CI 1.01-1.55), the impact of individual reminders was variable. A total of three of nine reminders effectively increased rates of recommended care for diabetes or CAD. The majority of physicians (76%) thought that reminders improved quality of care.
                An integrated electronic reminder system resulted in variable improvement in care for diabetes and CAD. These improvements were often limited and quality gaps persist. The purpose of this randomized, controlled, home care intervention was to test the effectiveness of two nurse-targeted, e-mail-based interventions to increase home care nurses' adherence to pain assessment and management guidelines, and to improve patient outcomes. Nurses from a large urban non-profit home care organization were assigned to usual care or one of two interventions upon identification of an eligible cancer patient with pain. The basic intervention consisted of a patient-specific, one-time e-mail reminder highlighting six pain-specific clinical recommendations. The augmented intervention supplemented the initial e-mail reminder with provider prompts, patient education material, and clinical nurse specialist outreach. Over 300 nurses were randomized and outcomes of 673 of their patients were reviewed. Data collection involved clinical record abstraction of nurse care practices and patient interviews completed approximately 45 days after start of care. The intervention had limited effect on nurse-documented care practices but patient outcomes were positively influenced. Patients in the augmented group improved significantly over the control group in ratings of pain intensity at its worst, whereas patients in the basic group had better ratings of pain intensity on average. Other outcomes measures were also positively influenced but did not reach statistical significance. Our findings suggest that although reminders have some role in improving cancer pain management, a more intensive approach is needed for a generalized nursing workforce with limited recent exposure to state-of-the-art pain management practices. We developed a computer-stored medical record system containing a limited set of the total clinical data base--primarily diagnostic studies and treatments. This system responds to its own content according to physician-authored reminder rules. To determine the effect of the reminder messages generated by 1490 rules on physician behavior, we randomly assigned practitioners in a general medicine clinic to study or control groups. The computer found indications for six different actions per patient in 12 467 patients during a 2-year study: 61 study group residents who received computer reminders responded to 49% of these indications; 54 control group residents, to only 29% (p less than 0.0001). Preventive care (occult blood testing, mammographic screening, weight reduction diets, influenza and pneumococcal vaccines) was affected. The intentions of the study group to use a given action for an indication predicted their response to the indications (p less than 0.03, r2 = 0.33). The intentions of the control residents did not. In New Zealand, more than 5% of people aged 50 years and older have undiagnosed diabetes; most of them attend family practitioners (FPs) at least once a year.
                To test the effectiveness of patients or computers as reminders to screen for diabetes in patients attending FPs.
                A randomized-controlled trial compared screening rates in 4 intervention arms: patient reminders, computer reminders, both reminders, and usual care. The trial lasted 2 months. The patient reminder was a diabetes risk self-assessment sheet filled in by patients and given to the FP during the consultation. The computer reminder was an icon that flashed only for patients considered eligible for screening.
                One hundred and seven FPs.
                The primary outcome was whether each eligible patient, who attended during the trial, was or was not tested for blood glucose. Analysis was by intention to treat and allowed for clustering by FP.
                Patient reminders (odds ratio [OR] 1.72, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.21, 2.43), computer reminders (OR 2.55, 1.68, 3.88), and both reminders (OR 1.69, 1.11, 2.59) were all effective compared with usual care. Computer reminders were more effective than patient reminders (OR 1.49, 1.07, 2.07). Patients were more likely to be screened if they visited the FP repeatedly, if patients were non-European, if they were "regular" patients of the practice, and if their FP had a higher screening rate prior to the study.
                Patient and computer reminders were effective methods to increase screening for diabetes. However, the effects were not additive. A computer was used to prospectively detect and suggest responses to simple, medication-related events as reflected in a computerized record in a prospective, randomized study of a diabetes clinic with primary-care responsibility. There were two categories of event/suggestions: when the last observation of a test required for medication control was too old, the computer suggested a repeat; and when an abnormality with therapeutic implications was detected, the computer suggested a specific change in therapeutics. Clinicians responded to 36% of events in the first category with computer reminders and 11% without (P less than 0.0001); they responded to 28% of events in the second category with computer assistance and 13% without (P less than 0.026). For the most clinically significant of these second category events, the difference was even greater: 47% with and 4% without computer assistance (P less than 0.0004). I believe that computer detection and response (in the form of reminders) to simple clinical events will change clinician behavior. Laboratory services play an important part in screening, diagnosis, and management of patients within primary care. However, unnecessary use of laboratory tests is increasing. Our aim was to assess the effect of two interventions on the number of laboratory tests requested by primary-care physicians.
                We did a cluster randomised controlled trial using a 2x2 factorial design, involving 85 primary-care practices (370 family practitioners) that request all laboratory tests from one regional centre. The interventions were quarterly feedback of practice requesting rates for nine laboratory tests, enhanced with educational messages, and brief educational reminder messages added to the test result reports for nine laboratory tests. The primary outcome was the number of targeted tests requested by primary-care practices during the 12 months of the intervention. This study is registered as an International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial, number ISRCTN06490422.
                Practices that received either or both the enhanced feedback and the reminder messages were significantly less likely than the control group to request the targeted tests in total (enhanced feedback odds ratio 0.87, 95% CI 0.81-0.94; reminder messages 0.89, 0.83-0.93). The effect of the interventions varied across the targeted tests individually, although the number of tests requested for both interventions was generally reduced. Neither intervention was consistently better than the other.
                Enhanced feedback of requesting rates and brief educational reminder messages, alone and in combination, are effective strategies for reducing test requesting in primary care. Both strategies are feasible within most laboratory settings. Randomized trials were performed in Denmark and The Netherlands to determine the effect of mailed reminders on the response rate in surveys among patients in general practice. In both countries, general practitioners handed out questionnaires to 200 adult patients who came to visit them. An intervention group of 100 patients received reminders at 3 weeks after the visit, whereas a control group of the remaining 100 patients did not receive reminders. The response rate was significantly higher in the intervention groups than in the control group in The Netherlands (86% versus 55%, respectively) but not in Denmark (87% versus 81%, respectively). Mailed reminders can improve the response rate in surveys related to a general practice, but they are not effective in all situations.
Point of care computer reminders generally achieve small to modest improvements in provider behaviour. A minority of interventions showed larger effects, but no specific reminder or contextual features were significantly associated with effect magnitude. Further research must identify design features and contextual factors consistently associated with larger improvements in provider behaviour if computer reminders are to succeed on more than a trial and error basis.