Evaluating a Prescribing Feedback System for Acute Care Providers

NIH RePORTER · VA · I01 · · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

No systematic, automated process for providing feedback to acute care providers exists in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), despite there being 432,000 acute care visits annually by Veterans seeking acute care via the emergency department (ED), urgent care clinics, or primary care clinics in the VHA. More than 144 million prescriptions are written in these VHA acute care settings each year, many for antibiotics or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). More than 30% of acute care prescriptions for antibiotics or NSAIDs are inappropriate and carry associated increased risk of adverse drug events (ADEs) due to lack of patient or comorbidity familiarity, drug-drug interactions, and patient pressure to prescribe. Currently, acute outpatient care providers operate without knowledge of their own prescribing quality or patient outcomes. This absence of feedback creates a vacuum through which providers may falsely assume a positive outcome. Inadequate outcomes feedback and understanding of indications and contraindications to prescribing antibiotics and NSAIDs have hindered improvement in the quality and safety of prescriptions for Veteran in acute care settings. We will use user-centered design to develop a scalable prescribing feedback system that includes audit and feedback, academic detailing, and non-financial incentives, will be implemented to examine how this multifaceted intervention impacts potentially inappropriate prescribing and ADEs in acute outpatient care settings in the VHA. This project describes a mixed-methods proposal that addresses major HSR&D priorities to improve Veteran health and advance the VHA as a learning healthcare system. The Specific Aims are: 1) Evaluate determinants of potentially inappropriate prescribing to design intervention implementation in acute outpatient care settings.; 2) Develop and evaluate a risk-adjusted provider profiling surveillance system; 3) Refine the visual representation of the feedback system with user-centered design; and 4) Examine the impact of implementation of a multifaceted intervention on potentially inappropriate prescriptions and ADEs. The team is uniquely qualified to accomplish these aims, with expertise in healthcare operations research, informatics, human factors engineering and user-centered design, implementation science, qualitative methods, and practicing clinicians in acute care settings (emergency department and primary care). The institutional environment at the VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System and Vanderbilt University Medical Center is outstanding, including the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC), a site for VA Quality Scholars, an innovative qualitative research center; nationally ranked graduate programs in the relevant fields of study; and the national CTSA coordinating center. This application will develop an automated feedback system for acute care providers using antibiotic and NSAID prescribing as two exemplars of the need fo...

Key facts

NIH application ID
10067710
Project number
1I01HX003057-01A2
Recipient
VETERANS HEALTH ADMINISTRATION
Principal Investigator
MICHAEL E. MATHENY
Activity code
I01
Funding institute
VA
Fiscal year
2020
Award amount
Award type
1
Project period
2020-10-01 → 2024-09-30