E-mails to Nudge Safer and Better-Informed Prescribing of Risky Drugs

Columbia University

Status: Active, not recruiting

Conditions: Opioid Prescribing; Prescription Drug Misuse

Treatments: Behavioral: PDMP Legal Mandate E-mail; Behavioral: PDMP Clinical Benefit E-mail

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06443385

AEARCTR-0013549 (Registry Identifier)

AAAV1928

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study will test e-mails to encourage engagement with the Minnesota prescription monitoring program (PMP/PDMP) and will evaluate the effect of these e-mails on PMP/PDMP use and controlled substance prescribing.

Full description

Drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed in recent years, and many overdoses continue to involve prescribed medications like opioids and stimulants. At the same time, state prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs), which help clinicians prescribe these medications safely, remain underused. In Minnesota, 32% of opioid prescriptions are written by clinicians who do not use the PDMP. In many states, including Minnesota, policymakers have limited tools to raise PDMP use even though it is often required under state law. To address this policy dilemma, this study will test e-mails designed to facilitate PDMP use and evaluate their effects on PDMP use and controlled substance prescribing. This study will include a projected 7,126 physician and physician assistant prescribers of opioids and other controlled substances who lack active PDMP accounts, never query the PDMP, or query the PDMP infrequently relative to their prescribing volume. To generate evidence on clinician motivation for responding to encouragement, the study will randomly vary messaging to focus on legal requirements to use the PDMP vs. clinical benefits of the PDMP.

Enrollment: 7,872 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Minnesota physician or physician assistant
• Controlled substance prescriber not following state requirements to maintain an active PDMP account, or opioid prescriber not searching the PDMP or infrequently searching the PDMP

Exclusion criteria

• No e-mail address available

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

7,872 participants in 3 patient groups

Legal Mandate Messaging

Experimental group

Treatment:

Behavioral: PDMP Legal Mandate E-mail

Clinical Benefit Messaging

Experimental group

Treatment:

Behavioral: PDMP Clinical Benefit E-mail

Control

No Intervention group