Automated alerts to aid clinical decision-making are designed with the best of intentions but can be easy to ignore or overlook. But a randomized trial testing such electronic alerts or “nudges” for promoting statin prescribing may have identified a few design features that help their success, researchers say.
In the trial’s primary finding, for example, reminders displayed to primary care physicians in the electronic health record (EHR) worked best when the system also reached out to the patient.
Reminders sent only to the clinician also boosted statin prescribing, but not as well, and nudging only the patient didn’t work at all compared to a nudge-free usual care approach. The patient-only nudges consisted of text messages explaining why a statin prescription may figure in their upcoming appointment.
Nudge Trustworthiness
Importantly, the clinician nudges were more than simply reminders to consider a statin prescription, Mitesh S. Patel, MD, MBA, Ascension Health, St. Louis, Missouri, told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology. They also displayed the patient’s atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) 10-year risk score and explained why a statin may be appropriate. He thinks that information, often left out of such clinical-decision support alerts, increases physician trust in them.
In another key feature, Patel said, the EHR nudges themselves were actionable — that is, they were functional in ways that streamlined the prescribing process. In particular, they include checkbox shortcuts to prescribing statins at appropriate patient-specific dosages, making the entire process “faster and easier,” said Patel, who is senior author on the study published November 30 in JAMA Cardiology with lead author Srinath Adusumalli, MD, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
The timing may matter as well, he observed. In previous iterations of the study’s EHR nudge system, the nudge would appear “when you open the chart,” he said. “Now, it’s when you go to the orders section, which is when you’re going to be in the mindset of ordering prescriptions and tests.”
Prescription rates were higher with the doctor-patient nudges than with the doctor-only approach, Patel speculates, largely because the decision process for initiating statins is shared. “The most effective intervention is going to recognize that and try to bring the two groups together.”
Two Text Messages
The trial, with 158 participating physicians in 28 primary-care practices, randomly assigned 4131 patients to three intervention groups and one control group. Nudges were sent only to the physician, only to the patient, or to both physician and patient; and there was a no-nudge usual care group.
Patient nudges consisted of two text messages, one 4 days and another 15 minutes before the appointment, announcing that prescription of a statin “to reduce the chance of a heart attack” would be discussed with the physician, the report states.
Statins are grossly underprescribed nationally, it notes, and that was reflected in prescription rates seen during the study’s initial 12-month, no-intervention period of observation. Rates ranged from only 4.7% up to 6% of patients across the four assignment groups.
During the subsequent 6-month intervention period, however, the rates climbed in the doctor-only and doctor-plus-patient nudge groups compared with usual care, by 5.5 (P = .01) and 7.2 (P = .001) absolute percentage points, respectively.
The overall cohort’s mean age was 65.5; about half were male, 29% were Black, 66% were White, and 22.6% already had a cardiovascular disease diagnosis. The analysis was adjusted for calendar month and preintervention statin prescribing rates. Further adjustment for demographics, insurance type, household income, and comorbidities yielded results similar to the primary analysis, the report states.
The Results in Context
“Although the differences in the combined clinician and patient and clinician-only arms were small, this outcome needs to be interpreted in the context of the population in which the study was performed,” an editorial accompanying the published report states.
For example, “the majority of untreated patients were candidates for primary, not secondary, prevention, making this group of patients particularly challenging for seeing large effect sizes of interventions.”
Moreover, “There was a high baseline prescription rate of statins in the statin-eligible population (approximately 70%) and a high rate of already established patients,” write Faraz S. Ahmad, MD, and Stephen D. Persell, MD, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois.
Among the approximately 30% of patients who had not previously been prescribed statins, the true target of the nudge interventions, the published trial report states, about 98% were not seeing the physician for the first time.
So “this may not have been the first opportunity to discuss statins,” they write. “It is possible that many of these patients were resistant to statins in the past, which could have created a ceiling effect for prescribing rates.”
Patel reports owning and receiving personal fees from Catalyst Health; and serving on an advisory board for and receiving personal fees from Humana. Adusumalli reports having been employed by CVS Health. Ahmad reports receiving consulting fees from Teladoc Livongo and Pfizer. Persell discloses receiving grants from Omron Healthcare.
JAMA Cardiol 2022. Published online November 30. Full Text, Editorial
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