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Initiatives with personalized information appear to boost statin prescriptions
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Patient-education initiatives appear to be slightly better than interventions focusing only on physician education for increasing statin prescription rates, but the initiatives appear to be best when they provide personalized information, according to a systematic review published in JAMA Cardiology.
The researchers reviewed 20 published studies of effects of interventions on statin-prescribing rates. The studies covered 109,807 patients.
Among the 20 studies, eight showed statistically significant increases in statin prescription rates, with absolute effect sizes spanning from 4.2% (95% CI, 2.2-6.4) to 23% (95% CI, 7.3-38.9), Robert T. Sparrow, MD, from the faculty of medical science at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University in London, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues wrote.
The ORs from the eight successful studies ranged from 1.29 (95% CI, 1.01-1.66) to 11.8 (95% CI, 8.8-15.9), according to the researchers.
Among the seven studies of patient-education interventions, four showed the intervention led to significant increases in statin-prescribing rates and one documented positive qualitative outcomes, Sparrow and colleagues wrote.
Of the five studies of decision-support tools, two had positive outcomes, and of the eight studies of physician-education interventions, four conferred increases in statin prescribing rates, according to the researchers.
Traits of successful interventions included providing personalized CV risk information, offering dynamic decision-support tools and generating audit-and-feedback reports, the researchers wrote.
“Although consistently positive results were not found with any intervention type, several qualitative trends emerged,” Sparrow and colleagues wrote. “Interventions that incorporate patient-education programs showed apparent benefit with regard to statin-prescribing rates, and physician-focused interventions were more effective when they used dynamic decision-support tools and/or audit-and-feedback systems in parallel. Overall, the interventions and outcomes from the included studies were considerably heterogeneous, limiting further analysis.” – by Erik Swain
Disclosure: Sparrow reports no relevant financial disclosures. Please see the study for the other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.
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