Reminders, Cost Sharing, and Healthcare Use

Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare

Status: Completed

Conditions: Health Care Seeking Behavior; Health Behavior; Health Care Utilization

Treatments: Other: Reminder (information letter)

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05117333

THL/3181/6.02.01/2021

Details and patient eligibility

About

The investigators conduct a large-scale randomized controlled trial in Finland by sending three types of information letters to households to examine whether the reminder letters affect healthcare use. All letters remind of the importance of seeking care to treat potential health problems.

This study has two primary objectives are: to evaluate the effects of an information nudge reminding on the importance of diagnosing and treating health problems and to evaluate the effects of additionally providing information on the fact that primary care nurse visits have become exempt from copayments. Main outcomes include the number of primary care nurse visits and general practitioner (GP) visits in a six-month follow-up.

Full description

This study has two main objectives: (i) to evaluate the effect of an information nudge reminding on the importance of diagnosing and treating health problems and (ii) to evaluate the effect of providing information on the fact that primary care nurse visits have become exempt from co-payments.

Enrollment: 47,398 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 55+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Residency in one of the 25 target municipalities as of September 15, 2021.
• Born in 1966 or earlier (aged 55 or more at the end of 2021).
• Living in a household with a maximum of three individuals aged 55 or above.

Exclusion criteria

• Individuals living in households (postal address) with more than three individuals aged 55 and above.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Triple Blind

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47,398 participants in 4 patient groups

Basic letter

Active Comparator group

Description:

This reminder states that if healthcare is not consumed at the right time, health may deteriorate and diagnoses and treatment may be delayed.

Treatment:

Other: Reminder (information letter)

Co-pay

Active Comparator group

Description:

This reminder states that if healthcare is not consumed at the right time, health may deteriorate and diagnoses and treatment may be delayed AND informs recipients about a new law that abolished all co-payments for all primary care nurse visits in Finland.

Treatment:

Other: Reminder (information letter)

GP-Co-pay

Active Comparator group

Description:

This reminder states that if healthcare is not consumed at the right time, health may deteriorate and diagnoses and treatment may be delayed AND informs recipients about a new law that abolished all co-payments for all primary care nurse visits in Finland, AND informs recipients that the new law did not abolish co-payments related to general practitioner visits.

Treatment:

Other: Reminder (information letter)

Control treatment

No Intervention group

Description:

There is no intervention in the control treatment. The entire population aged 55 and above in the treatment regions will serve as a control group.