Enhanced Prescription Drug Label to Improve Patient Understanding and Use

Northwestern University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Prescription Medication Understanding

Treatments: Other: Enhanced Label

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00973180

NU-0923017

Details and patient eligibility

About

The overall objective of this study is to test the efficacy of an evidence-based, enhanced Rx container label design to improve patients' understanding of instructions for use.

The investigators will conduct a randomized controlled trial (N=960) to evaluate the efficacy of the enhanced Rx container label to improve patients' understanding of actual prescribed medicines, compared to a standard label format. Patients with type II diabetes and/or hypertension at safety-net clinics affiliated with one central-fill pharmacy (Nova Scripts Central - NSC) receive their prescribed medicines from this location. Recruited subjects in this study will be randomly assigned to either intervention (enhanced Rx container label) or control (standard Rx label). All pill-form, regular dosing schedule medicines, including diabetes and hypertensive (i.e. ACE inhibitor) medicines associated with patients' treatment will be labeled according to study arm by the central-fill pharmacy. Study subjects will be interviewed at the time of dispensing the prescribed medicines at the clinic, again three months later (dispensing of refill), and finally nine months after baseline (dispensing of refill). Pharmacy refill data and medical record information - linked at these clinics - will be collected for exploratory analyses. Patients' ability to read and demonstrate Rx label instructions, including auxiliary warnings, will be the primary outcomes. Other exploratory outcome measures will also be measured, including 1) adverse effects associated with medication use defined by a) the rate of physician visits, b) the rate of emergency room visits, and c) the rate of hospitalizations and hospital admissions via emergency rooms for medication side effects (e.g. hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia); and 2) health outcome as measured by the change from baseline in hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) and blood pressure measurements. Data from the actual use trial will be processed, reviewed, analyzed (in order of hypotheses), and reports prepared during the final months of this last phase of the study.

Enrollment: 850 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 30+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Diagnosis of Type II diabetes or hypertension in their medical chart.
• 30 years or older.
• Fluent in English.

Exclusion criteria

• Uncorrectable hearing or visual impairment.
• Too ill to participate.

Trial design

850 participants in 2 patient groups

Enhanced Label

Experimental group

Description:

Subjects in this arm will receive their prescriptions labeled with our enhanced, patient-friendly label.

Treatment:

Other: Enhanced Label

Standard Label

No Intervention group

Description:

Subjects in this arm will receive their prescriptions labeled with a standard label.