Impact of Best Practice Alerts in Cardiology Outpatient Clinics

Duke University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Hypertension; Atrial Fibrillation

Treatments: Other: Best Practice Alert based in the Electronic Medical Record

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02436421

Pro00045379

Details and patient eligibility

About

This quality improvement intervention seeks to implement two Best Practice Alerts (BPAs) for use in cardiology clinics while simultaneously evaluating the impact of each BPA- one for patients with uncontrolled blood pressure and one for patients with atrial fibrillation not on anticoagulation.

Full description

Best Practice Alerts based will be created for hypertension and atrial fibrillation. Outpatient cardiology providers will be randomly allocated into one of three groups. The first group will receive the BPA for hypertension alone. The second group will receive the BPA for atrial fibrillation alone. The final group will receive both BPAs. The rate of blood pressure control for all patients and anticoagulation in patients with atrial fibrillation in each group will be evaluated prior to and after the implementation of the BPAs to determine the effect of the BPA.

Enrollment: 7,000 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 99 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• all patients seen routinely by cardiologists at Duke

Exclusion criteria

• none

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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7,000 participants in 3 patient groups

Atrial Fibrillation BPA

Other group

Description:

The alert will notify providers when patients with atrial fibrillation are not on anticoagulation

Treatment:

Other: Best Practice Alert based in the Electronic Medical Record

Hypertension BPA

Other group

Description:

The alert will notify providers when patients have elevated blood pressure

Treatment:

Other: Best Practice Alert based in the Electronic Medical Record

Atrial Fibrillation and Hypertension BPA

Other group

Description:

Providers in this arm will receive both alerts

Treatment:

Other: Best Practice Alert based in the Electronic Medical Record