What is in your wallet? A cluster randomized trial of the effects of showing comparative patient out-of-pocket costs on primary care prescribing for uncomplicated hypertension

Personalized dose selection for the first Waldenström macroglobulinemia patient on the PRECISE CURATE.AI trial

The digital revolution in healthcare, amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic and artificial intelligence (AI) advances, has led to a surge in the development of digital technologies. However, integrating digital health solutions, especially AI-based ones, in rare diseases like Waldenström macroglobulinemia (WM) remains challenging due to limited data, among other factors. CURATE.AI, a clinical decision support system, offers an alternative to big data approaches by calibrating individual treatment profiles based on that individual's data alone. We present a case study from the PRECISE CURATE.AI trial with a WM patient, where, over two years, CURATE.AI provided dynamic Ibrutinib dose recommendations to clinicians (users) aimed at achieving optimal IgM levels. An 80-year-old male with newly diagnosed WM requiring treatment due to anemia was recruited to the trial for CURATE.AI-based dosing of the Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor Ibrutinib. The primary and secondary outcome measures were focused on scientific and logistical feasibility. Preliminary results underscore the platform's potential in enhancing user and patient engagement, in addition to clinical efficacy. Based on a two-year-long patient enrollment into the CURATE.AI-augmented treatment, this study showcases how AI-enabled tools can support the management of rare diseases, emphasizing the integration of AI to enhance personalized therapy.

Randomized Experiments to Reduce Overuse of Health Care: A Scoping Review

OBJECTIVE

Health care overuse is pervasive in countries with advanced health care delivery systems. We hypothesize that effective interventions to reduce low-value care that targets patients or clinicians are mediated by psychological and cognitive processes that change behaviors and that interventions targeting these processes are varied. Thus, we performed a scoping review of experimental studies of interventions, including the interventions' objectives and characteristics, to reduce low-value care that targeted psychological and cognitive processes.

METHODS

We systematically searched databases for experimental studies of interventions to change cognitive orientations and affective states in the setting of health care overuse. Outcomes included observed overuse or a stated intention to use services. We used existing frameworks for behavior change and mechanisms of change to categorize the interventions and the mediating processes.

RESULTS

Twenty-seven articles met the inclusion criteria. Sixteen studied the provision of information to patients or clinicians, with most providing cost information. Six studies used educational interventions, including the provision of feedback about individual practice. Studies rarely used counseling, behavioral nudges, persuasion, and rewards. Mechanisms for behavior change included gain in knowledge or confidence and motivation by social norms.

CONCLUSIONS

In this scoping review, we found few experiments testing interventions that directly target the psychological and cognitive processes of patients or clinicians to reduce low-value care. Most studies provided information to patients or clinicians without measuring or considering mediating factors toward behavior change. These findings highlight the need for process-driven experimental designs, including trials of behavioral nudges and persuasive language involving a trusting patient-clinician relationship, to identify effective interventions to reduce low-value care.

One Health: Insights from Organizational & Social, Technology Assessment and Human Factors Perspectives

OBJECTIVES

To offer diverse but complementary perspectives on how biomedical and health informatics can be informed by and help to achieve the vision of One Health.

METHODS

Overview of key considerations and critical discussion of common themes, barriers and opportunities, based on collaborative review by International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) working group members active in related fields.

RESULTS

Health and care systems are complex sociotechnical systems that need explicit design and implementation strategies to align with the goals of One Health. The evidence-based health informatics paradigm and associated frameworks for evaluation of digital health technologies need to broaden their scope to take full account of the One Health approach. Informatics has specific contributions to make to One Health, for example by improved user experience reducing energy consumption and effective app design enhancing medication adherence.

CONCLUSIONS

One Health is inherently intertwined with ergonomic, sociotechnical and evaluation perspectives in biomedical and health informatics. Health is a planetary issue that requires interdisciplinary collaborative action. The theories and principles of biomedical and health informatics offer many opportunities to transform digital health technology to better serve the One Health agenda.

Implementing pharmacist-prescriber collaboration to improve evidence-based anticoagulant use: a randomized trial

BACKGROUND

Direct oral anticoagulant medications are commonly used to treat or prevent thrombotic conditions, such as pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, and atrial fibrillation. However, up to 10-15% of patients receiving these medications get unsafe doses based on a patient's kidney or liver function, potential interactions with other medications, and indication for taking the medication. Alert systems may be beneficial for improving evidence-based prescribing, but can be burdensome and are not currently able to provide monitoring after the initial prescription is written.

METHODS/DESIGN

This study will improve upon existing alert systems by testing novel medication alerts that encourage collaboration between prescribers (e.g., physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants) and expert pharmacists working in anticoagulation clinics. The study will also improve upon the existing alert system by incorporating dynamic long-term monitoring of patient needs and encouraging collaboration between prescribers and expert pharmacists working in anticoagulation clinics. Incorporating state-of-the-art user-centered design principles, prescribing healthcare providers will be randomized to different types of electronic health record medication alerts when a patient has an unsafe anticoagulant prescription. We will identify which alerts are most effective at encouraging evidence-based prescribing and will test moderators to tailor alert delivery to when it is most beneficial. The aims of the project are to (1) determine the effect of notifications targeting existing inappropriate DOAC prescriptions; (2) examine the effect of alerts on newly prescribed inappropriate DOACs; and (3) examine changes in the magnitude of effects over time for both the new prescription alerts and existing prescription notifications for inappropriate DOACs over the 18-month study period.

DISCUSSION

Findings from this project will establish a framework for implementing prescriber-pharmacist collaboration for high-risk medications, including anticoagulants. If effectively implemented at the more than 3000 anticoagulation clinics that exist nationally, hundreds of thousands of patients taking direct oral anticoagulants stand to benefit from safer, evidence-based healthcare.

TRIALS REGISTRATION

NCT05351749.

Health informatics interventions to minimize out-of-pocket medication costs for patients: what providers want

Objective

To explore diverse provider perspectives on: strategies for addressing patient medication cost barriers; patient medication cost information gaps; current medication cost-related informatics tools; and design features for future tool development.

Materials and Methods

We conducted 38 semistructured interviews with providers (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, and administrators) in a Midwestern health system in the United States. We used 3 rounds of qualitative coding to identify themes.

Results

Providers lacked access to information about: patients’ ability to pay for medications; true costs of full medication regimens; and cost impacts of patient insurance changes. Some providers said that while existing cost-related tools were helpful, they contained unclear insurance information and several questioned the information’s quality. Cost-related information was not available to everyone who needed it and was not always available when needed. Fragmentation of information across sources made cost-alleviation information difficult to access. Providers desired future tools to compare medication costs more directly; provide quick references on costs to facilitate clinical conversations; streamline medication resource referrals; and provide centrally accessible visual summaries of patient affordability challenges.

Discussion

These findings can inform the next generation of informatics tools for minimizing patients’ out-of-pocket costs. Future tools should support the work of a wider range of providers and situations and use cases than current tools do. Such tools would have the potential to improve prescribing decisions and better link patients to resources.

Conclusion

Results identified opportunities to fill multidisciplinary providers’ information gaps and ways in which new tools could better support medication affordability for patients.

Almost a quarter of Americans taking prescription medications have difficulty affording them. We asked 38 healthcare providers what they do to help patients get affordable medications. They try to reduce the number of medications that patients take, choose more affordable medication options, and connect them to free medications or financial help. But it is hard for providers to do these things because they don’t always know which patients have financial challenges, and they may not know how much medications cost patients. Healthcare providers use digital tools like ordering systems to pick medications for patients, but they do not always have clear price information and they do not help outside of healthcare visits with prescribers. It is also hard for healthcare providers to get information about what patients have difficulty affording medications, and about resources to help them. Healthcare providers want new and improved digital tools to help them choose medications, and to be able to compare exact medication price differences. They also want a visual sign for patients with financial challenges, and centralized information about cost reduction resources. Finally, they desire tools to help them talk to patients about mediation prices, and medication price reports for patients themselves.

Market viability: a neglected concept in implementation science

This debate paper asserts that implementation science needs to incorporate a key concept from entrepreneurship—market demand—and demonstrates how assessing an innovation’s potential market viability might advance the pace and success of innovation adoption and sustainment. We describe key concepts, language distinctions, and questions that entrepreneurs pose to implementation scientists—many of which implementation scientists appear ill-equipped to answer. The paper concludes with recommendations about how concepts from entrepreneurship, notably market viability assessment, can enhance the translation of research discoveries into real-world adoption, sustained use, and population health benefits. The paper further proposes activities that can advance implementation science’s capacity to draw from the field of entrepreneurship, along with the data foundations required to assess and cultivate market demand.

Starting Antihypertensive Drug Treatment With Combination Therapy: Controversies in Hypertension - Con Side of the Argument

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text.

Strategies to Improve Adherence to Anti-Hypertensive Medications: a Narrative Review

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Medication adherence is critical for effective management of hypertension, yet half of patients with hypertension are non-adherent to medications. In this review, we describe and critically evaluate medication adherence interventions published in the past 3 years for patients with hypertension.

RECENT FINDINGS

We identified 1593 articles and 163 underwent full review, of which 42 studies met the inclusion criteria. Studies were classified into eight categories: simplification of medication regimen (e.g., fixed dose combination pills); electronic Health (eHealth) tools (e.g., text messaging reminders); behavioral counseling (e.g., motivational interviewing); healthcare system changes (e.g., patient-centered medical home); patient education; multicomponent chronic disease management program; home blood pressure monitoring; and financial incentives. Studies utilizing strategies to simplify medication regimens, eHealth tools, patient education, and behavioral counseling were most likely to report positive findings. Interventions targeting patient behavior were more likely to be associated with improvements in medication adherence compared to those targeting providers or the healthcare system. eHealth tools show promise for augmenting behavioral interventions. A major limitation of included trials was short study duration and use of self-report measures of medication adherence. Future research should explore how complex interventions that utilize a combination of evidence-based strategies and target multiple adherence behaviors (e.g., both day-to-day medication taking and long-term persistence) may be efficacious in improving medication adherence.

Computerised clinical decision support systems and absolute improvements in care: meta-analysis of controlled clinical trials

OBJECTIVE

To report the improvements achieved with clinical decision support systems and examine the heterogeneity from pooling effects across diverse clinical settings and intervention targets.

DESIGN

Systematic review and meta-analysis.

DATA SOURCES

Medline up to August 2019.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR SELECTING STUDIES AND METHODS

Randomised or quasi-randomised controlled trials reporting absolute improvements in the percentage of patients receiving care recommended by clinical decision support systems. Multilevel meta-analysis accounted for within study clustering. Meta-regression was used to assess the degree to which the features of clinical decision support systems and study characteristics reduced heterogeneity in effect sizes. Where reported, clinical endpoints were also captured.

RESULTS

In 108 studies (94 randomised, 14 quasi-randomised), reporting 122 trials that provided analysable data from 1 203 053 patients and 10 790 providers, clinical decision support systems increased the proportion of patients receiving desired care by 5.8% (95% confidence interval 4.0% to 7.6%). This pooled effect exhibited substantial heterogeneity (I2=76%), with the top quartile of reported improvements ranging from 10% to 62%. In 30 trials reporting clinical endpoints, clinical decision support systems increased the proportion of patients achieving guideline based targets (eg, blood pressure or lipid control) by a median of 0.3% (interquartile range -0.7% to 1.9%). Two study characteristics (low baseline adherence and paediatric settings) were associated with significantly larger effects. Inclusion of these covariates in the multivariable meta-regression, however, did not reduce heterogeneity.

CONCLUSIONS

Most interventions with clinical decision support systems appear to achieve small to moderate improvements in targeted processes of care, a finding confirmed by the small changes in clinical endpoints found in studies that reported them. A minority of studies achieved substantial increases in the delivery of recommended care, but predictors of these more meaningful improvements remain undefined.

Economic impact of clinical decision support interventions based on electronic health records

Background

Unnecessary healthcare utilization, non-adherence to current clinical guidelines, or insufficient personalized care are perpetual challenges and remain potential major cost-drivers for healthcare systems around the world. Implementing decision support systems into clinical care is promised to improve quality of care and thereby yield substantial effects on reducing healthcare expenditure. In this article, we evaluate the economic impact of clinical decision support (CDS) interventions based on electronic health records (EHR).

Methods

We searched for studies published after 2014 using MEDLINE, CENTRAL, WEB OF SCIENCE, EBSCO, and TUFTS CEA registry databases that encompass an economic evaluation or consider cost outcome measures of EHR based CDS interventions. Thereupon, we identified best practice application areas and categorized the investigated interventions according to an existing taxonomy of front-end CDS tools.

Results and discussion

Twenty-seven studies are investigated in this review. Of those, twenty-two studies indicate a reduction of healthcare expenditure after implementing an EHR based CDS system, especially towards prevalent application areas, such as unnecessary laboratory testing, duplicate order entry, efficient transfusion practice, or reduction of antibiotic prescriptions. On the contrary, order facilitators and undiscovered malfunctions revealed to be threats and could lead to new cost drivers in healthcare. While high upfront and maintenance costs of CDS systems are a worldwide implementation barrier, most studies do not consider implementation cost. Finally, four included economic evaluation studies report mixed monetary outcome results and thus highlight the importance of further high-quality economic evaluations for these CDS systems.

Conclusion

Current research studies lack consideration of comparative cost-outcome metrics as well as detailed cost components in their analyses. Nonetheless, the positive economic impact of EHR based CDS interventions is highly promising, especially with regard to reducing waste in healthcare.

Beneficial Agents for Patients With Type 2 Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease or Obesity: Utilization in an Era of Accumulating Evidence

This study was an analysis of a national sample of U.S. medical office visits from 2014 to 2016, a period when evidence of effectiveness was emerging for a variety of beneficial type 2 diabetes agents with regard to potential reduction in diabetes comorbidities. Ideal therapy was defined as an American Diabetes Association-identified beneficial agent plus metformin. The associations between atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease or obesity and use of these agents were explored.

A global perspective on the costs of hypertension: a systematic review

INTRODUCTION

Hypertension, particularly untreated, leads to serious complications and contributes to high costs incurred by the whole society. The aim of the review was to carry out a social and economic comparison of various categories of hypertension costs from different countries.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The study was a systematic review. PubMed, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar databases were searched. Hypertension costs were analyzed in 8 cost categories. An attempt was made to determine whether selected economic and social factors (such as HDI or GDP) influenced hypertension costs.

RESULTS

The review included data from 15 countries: Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, China, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Poland, Spain, USA, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. The papers included in the review were heterogeneous with respect to cost categories, which made comparisons difficult. The average total costs of hypertension for all the studied countries, calculated per person, amounted to 630.14 Int$, direct costs - 1,497.36 Int$, and indirect costs - 282.34 Int$. The ranking of countries by costs and by selected economic and social indices points at the possible relationship between these indices and hypertension costs.

CONCLUSIONS

The costs of hypertension calculated per country reached the region of several dozen billion Int$. Other sources usually showed lower costs than those presented in this review. This indicates a growth in costs from year to year and the future increasing burden on society. Globally uniform cost terminology and cost calculation standards need to be developed. That would facilitate making more informed decisions regarding fund allocation in hypertension management schemes.

Understanding the Haemodynamics of Hypertension

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

This article introduces the haemodynamic principles that underpin the pathophysiology of hypertension and introduces a rational physiological approach to appropriate pharmacologic treatment.

RECENT FINDINGS

Outdated understanding of haemodynamics based on previous measurement systems can no longer be applied to our understanding of the circulation. We question the current view of hypertension as defined by a predominantly systolic blood pressure and introduce the concept of vasogenic, cardiogenic and mixed-origin hypertension. We postulate that failure to identify the individual's haemodynamic pattern may lead to the use of inappropriate medication, which in turn may be a major factor in patient non-compliance with therapeutic strategies. A population-based approach to treatment of hypertension may lead to suboptimal functional dynamics in the individual patient. Finally, we question the validity of current guidelines and published evidence relating morbidity and mortality to the future treatment of hypertension. The importance of individual haemodynamic profiles may be pivotal in the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of hypertension if optimal control with minimal adverse effects is to be achieved. Research based on individual haemodynamic patterns is overdue.

The effects of on-screen, point of care computer reminders on processes and outcomes of care

BACKGROUND

The opportunity to improve care by delivering decision support to clinicians at the point of care represents one of the main incentives for implementing sophisticated clinical information systems. Previous reviews of computer reminder and decision support systems have reported mixed effects, possibly because they did not distinguish point of care computer reminders from e-mail alerts, computer-generated paper reminders, and other modes of delivering 'computer reminders'.

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate the effects on processes and outcomes of care attributable to on-screen computer reminders delivered to clinicians at the point of care.

SEARCH STRATEGY

We searched the Cochrane EPOC Group Trials register, MEDLINE, EMBASE and CINAHL and CENTRAL to July 2008, and scanned bibliographies from key articles.

SELECTION CRITERIA

Studies of a reminder delivered via a computer system routinely used by clinicians, with a randomised or quasi-randomised design and reporting at least one outcome involving a clinical endpoint or adherence to a recommended process of care.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Two authors independently screened studies for eligibility and abstracted data. For each study, we calculated the median improvement in adherence to target processes of care and also identified the outcome with the largest such improvement. We then calculated the median absolute improvement in process adherence across all studies using both the median outcome from each study and the best outcome.

MAIN RESULTS

Twenty-eight studies (reporting a total of thirty-two comparisons) were included. Computer reminders achieved a median improvement in process adherence of 4.2% (interquartile range (IQR): 0.8% to 18.8%) across all reported process outcomes, 3.3% (IQR: 0.5% to 10.6%) for medication ordering, 3.8% (IQR: 0.5% to 6.6%) for vaccinations, and 3.8% (IQR: 0.4% to 16.3%) for test ordering. In a sensitivity analysis using the best outcome from each study, the median improvement was 5.6% (IQR: 2.0% to 19.2%) across all process measures and 6.2% (IQR: 3.0% to 28.0%) across measures of medication ordering. In the eight comparisons that reported dichotomous clinical endpoints, intervention patients experienced a median absolute improvement of 2.5% (IQR: 1.3% to 4.2%). Blood pressure was the most commonly reported clinical endpoint, with intervention patients experiencing a median reduction in their systolic blood pressure of 1.0 mmHg (IQR: 2.3 mmHg reduction to 2.0 mmHg increase).

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS

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.