Don't Throw Your Heart Away: Patient Study 4

Carnegie Mellon University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cardiac Transplant Disorder

Treatments: Other: Stratified Transplant Survival Metric; Other: SRTR Information Format

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04809051

1 F30 HL152526-01-D

Details and patient eligibility

About

This empirical study tests whether transplant center performance data that reflect center donor acceptance rates influence patients and their family members to evaluate centers with high organ decline rates less favorably than centers with low organ decline rates. 400 transplant patients and family members will be recruited from transplant support group social media websites and randomized to one of four different information presentation conditions. Upon viewing a pair of outcome tables corresponding to their condition, the participants are asked to choose which hospital is higher performing (one hospital with a non-selective "accepting" strategy and one hospital with a more selective "cherrypicking" strategy.

Enrollment: 94 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Participants will be asked to participate if they confirm the following inclusion criteria in the consent form.

1. 18 years of age or older
2. must read and understand the information in the consent form
3. must want to participate in the research and continue with the survey
4. must be a pre- or post-transplant patient or family member of the transplant patient

Exclusion criteria

Participants who do not meet the primary criterion of being a pre- or post-transplant patient or family member of the transplant patient.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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94 participants in 4 patient groups

Condition 1: Combined Transplant Pictograph

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants randomized to baseline (control) arm Condition 1 will view only combined transplant survival outcome information (e.g. transplant survival rate not stratified by number and quality of donor hearts accepted at each center) when making a choice between the two hospitals. The "survival following transplant" metric is displayed as a survival rate pictograph corresponding to all patients at the center who received transplants.

Condition 2: Stratified Transplant Pictograph

Experimental group

Description:

Participants randomized to Condition 2 will view only stratified transplant survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. The "survival following transplant" metric is displayed as a pair of survival rate pictographs corresponding to two distinct groups of transplant patients at the center: those who received optimal donor organs and those who received adequate donor organs.

Treatment:

Other: Stratified Transplant Survival Metric

Condition 3: Combined Transplant SRTR

Experimental group

Description:

Participants randomized to Condition 3 will view only combined transplant survival outcome information (e.g. transplant survival rate not stratified by number and quality of donor hearts accepted at each center) when making a choice between the two hospitals. The "survival following transplant" metric is displayed as a quintile score corresponding to all patients at the center who received transplants.

Treatment:

Other: SRTR Information Format

Condition 4: Stratified Transplant SRTR

Experimental group

Description:

Participants randomized to Condition 4 will view only stratified transplant survival outcome information when making a choice between the two hospitals. The "survival following transplant" metric is displayed as a pair of quintile scores corresponding to two distinct groups of transplant patients at the center: those who received optimal donor organs and those who received adequate donor organs.

Treatment:

Other: Stratified Transplant Survival Metric

Other: SRTR Information Format