8 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
The overall purpose of this project is to improve the clinical outcomes of veterans with ischemic heart disease (IHD) through implementation of evidence-based lipid management, with a particular focus on veterans whose primary lipid abnormality is a low level of HDL-cholesterol (the �good� cholesterol).
Clinicians' decisions to order potentially unnecessary services -- such as those targeted in the Choosing Wisely® campaign -- are often affected by their high-pressure practice environments, which can make it hard to consistently avoid ordering low-value care. The field of behavioral economics offers a promising and highly scalable approach to decreasing use of low-value services: asking clinicians to commit to avoid ordering such services and providing them and their patients with resources to support adherence to this commitment. This project will evaluate the effects of such an intervention across 2 large health systems, Michigan Medicine and IHA, through a mixed-methods, stepped wedge cluster randomized trial. In each of the study clinics, clinicians will be invited to commit to following a set of targeted Choosing Wisely® recommendations. Clinicians who make such a commitment, and their patients, will receive access to key resources to support adherence to this commitment. To measure the effects of the intervention, automated clinical data and medical record data before and after the intervention will be examined. Surveys and semi-structured interviews of both clinicians and patients will also be conducted to determine the effects of the intervention on their decision-making and experiences.
This pragmatic trial examines the uptake and effects of primary care clinician commitments to follow 3 Choosing Wisely® recommendations. The investigators hypothesize that pre-encounter invitations to clinicians to commit to the recommendations will decrease ordering of: (1) imaging tests for low back pain, (2) antibiotics for acute sinusitis, and (3) imaging tests for headaches. The study is a mixed-methods, stepped wedge cluster randomized trial in which the intervention will be sequentially introduced to 6 clinics in southeastern Michigan in a randomly assigned order.
Current research shows low rates of quantitative vision screening at preschool ages in the medical home. This study targets providers (PCPs) to evaluate the effectiveness of a web-based intervention to improve knowledge about strabismus, amblyopia and preschool vision screening, to increase preschool vision screening rates, and to improve rates of diagnosis of strabismus and amblyopia by eye specialists.
Veterans who completed GEMS-Phase 1 will be asked to participate in GEMS-Phase 2 to determine the accuracy of methods used to assess mild memory problems. This will better help us evaluate the screening test completed in GEMS-Phase 1. The goals are: 1. Compare the assessment of memory made at the initial visit to assessments of memory made at the second evaluation. 2. Determine of veterans with mild memory problems have improvement or worsening of these memory problems over time. Our long-term goal remains to optimize the quality of care for veterans with cognitive impairment. We will also determine if patient characteristics can be used to target case-finding, describe the current process of care and evaluate the association between cognitive impairment and overall- and dementia-related health care utilization and costs.
The purpose of this study is to compare two ways of using anti-HIV drugs to help health care providers and patients decide how to best use anti-HIV treatments over many years. Many health care providers now treat patients with daily drugs to keep the viral load as low as possible. This approach helps patients with CD4 counts less than 200-250 cells/mm3 live longer without serious diseases. But it is not known if this is the best way to treat patients with higher CD4 counts. There is information suggesting that these patients may be able to wait to use anti-HIV drugs while CD4 counts are above 250 cells/mm3. Because this study will be carried out over several years, it will provide information on the long-term advantages and disadvantages of these two treatment strategies.
PRIMARY: To compare the clinical efficacy of two decision making strategies for initiating or changing antiretroviral therapy: decision making based on current clinical practice alone (i.e., initiating or changing therapy based on CD4 count decline and/or clinical progression) versus decision making based on plasma HIV RNA quantitation in addition to current clinical practice. SECONDARY: To evaluate toxicity, biological markers, and patient management in the two arms. Although changing therapies is a common strategy in the treatment of HIV disease, guidelines are needed to help clinicians and patients decide when a change in antiretroviral therapy is indicated. The technology of measuring HIV RNA in plasma has been suggested as a tool for monitoring clinical drug efficacy. However, uncertainty remains about whether aggressive antiretroviral treatment to lower HIV RNA and maintain low levels for as long as possible will confer clinical benefit in comparison with management based on monitoring CD4 counts and HIV-related symptoms.
This is a study of emergency physicians' prescribing patterns related to opioid (narcotic) medications. We are trying to determine whether giving providers access to their own prescribing data influences their prescribing patterns.