Demonstration Project

November 16, 2018: Primary Palliative Care for Emergency Medicine (PRIM-ER) (Corita Grudzen, MD, MSHS)

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

Speaker

Corita R. Grudzen, MD, MSHS, FACEP
Vice Chair for Research
Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Population Health
Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine
NYU School of Medicine

Topic

Primary Palliative Care for Emergency Medicine (PRIM-ER)

Keywords

PRIM-ER; Emergency department; Palliative care; NIH Collaboratory Trial; Pragmatic trial; Stepped-wedge study design; Clinical decision support; Best practice alerts; Advance care planning

Key Point

  • The PRIM-ER trial is a pragmatic, cluster-randomized, stepped wedge NIH Collaboratory Trial that will implement primary palliative care in emergency medicine across a diverse group of 35 emergency departments (EDs).
  • PRIM-ER’s clinical decision support intervention is tailored to each ED site. The study aims to enable system, organizational, and provider change in the emergency department workflow.
  • The study team is identifying and preparing site champions by conducting communication skills training in serious illness for emergency physicians and staff using the EM Talk program.

Discussion Themes

It is important to consider sustainability of the intervention during the planning phase of the trial. Plan for staff turnover and how new staff will be educated and oriented to the intervention.

The volume and sophistication of best practice alerts (BPAs) received by physicians varies across U.S. emergency departments. Alert “fatigue” can be a concern.

For more information on the PRIM-ER NIH Collaboratory Trial, visit the PRIM-ER website on the Living Textbook.

Tags

@Collaboratory1, #pctGR, #EmergencyMedicine

September 7, 2018: Spotlight on a New NIH Collaboratory Trial: HiLo

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

Kidney transplantation is the preferred treatment for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD), but an insufficient organ supply renders dialysis the only viable treatment option for most patients. Though clinical outcomes among patients receiving dialysis have improved modestly in recent years, annual rates of hospitalization and mortality remain unacceptably high, and quality of life is poor. Poor outcomes are driven primarily by increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), but interventions that improve outcomes in the general population by targeting traditional CVD risk factors have mostly failed in patients with ESRD. Current clinical practice guidelines advocate aggressive treatment of high serum phosphate to near-normal levels using dietary phosphate binders and restrictive diets. The benefits of this approach, however, are unproven, the optimal serum phosphate target remains unknown, and potential harms of aggressive treatment have not been definitively identified.

The Pragmatic Trial of Higher vs. Lower Serum Phosphate Targets in Patients Undergoing Hemodialysis (HiLo) plans to address these clinically important questions in a large, pragmatic, cluster-randomized trial that will evaluate the effects of liberalizing the serum phosphate target (“Hi”) versus maintaining aggressive phosphate control (“Lo”) for patients receiving treatment with maintenance hemodialysis.

 “The question at hand is something we grapple with on a daily basis in every dialysis facility across the country. Either answer will be important new information that will help us do a better job taking care of patients and hopefully improve their quality of life.”

HiLo is led by Myles Wolf, MD, of Duke University with support from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Read more about HiLo.

September 6, 2018: Spotlight on a New NIH Collaboratory Trial: ACP PEACE

Posted on by Karen Staman

Because many clinicians do not have the skill set to engage patients in conversations about advance care planning (ACP), many older Americans with advanced cancer receive aggressive interventions at the end of life that do not reflect their values, goals, and preferences. The ACP PEACE trial is investigating whether a comprehensive approach to ACP improves patient outcomes. The program will combine two evidence-based complementary interventions: clinician communication skills training (VitalTalk) and patient video decision aids (ACP Decisions). The goal is to provide both patients and clinicians with communication skills and tools so they can make informed decisions about end-of-life care.

“We’re doing an intervention where we include videos for patients about what the possible interventions are, and we’re also training the clinicians, the oncologists and their teams to have better communication about their goals of care and about treatment planning.” —James Tulsky, MD, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACP PEACE trial.

ACP-PEACE is one of the new NIH Collaboratory Trials and is led by Drs. James A. Tulsky and Angelo Volandes with support from the National Institute on Aging. Read more about ACP PEACE.

James Tulsky from NIH Research Collaboratory on Vimeo.

 

September 5, 2018: Spotlight on a New NIH Collaboratory Trial: GGC4H

Posted on by Karen Staman

Before the end of high school, more than half of all adolescents will use an illicit drug, about a quarter will meet the criteria for depression, and many others will engage in behaviors such as delinquency and violence. Guiding Good Choices is a universal evidence-based anticipatory guidance curriculum for parents of early adolescents that has been shown to reduce adolescent alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use; depression; and delinquent behavior. Evidence-based parenting interventions shown to prevent these behavioral health concerns could improve adolescent health trajectories if implemented widely in pediatric primary care.

Guiding Good Choices for Health (GCC4H): Testing Feasibility and Effectiveness of Universal Parent-Focused Prevention in Three Healthcare Systems is a cluster-randomized trial that will partner with pediatric primary care clinics to offer the training in three large, integrated healthcare systems serving socioeconomically diverse families.

“We already have an effective intervention, so we’re not trying to test whether it works or not; it’s really about getting the intervention into a population.”  —Richard Catalano, PhD, co-Principal Investigator of the GGC4H trial.

GGC4H is led by Richard Catalano, PhD, Margaret Kuklinski, PhD, and Stacy Sterling, DrPH, with support from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Read more about GGC4H.

September 4, 2018: Spotlight on a New NIH Collaboratory Trial: PRIM-ER

Posted on by Damon Seils

In the United States, half of persons 65 years and older have an emergency department visit in the last month of life, and three-quarters have an emergency department visit in the last 6 months of life. Admissions to intensive care units by emergency clinicians are on the rise, especially for older patients. Meanwhile, three-quarters of older adults with serious illness have thought about end-of-life care, and only 12% want life-prolonging care.

The Primary Palliative Care for Emergency Medicine (PRIM-ER) pragmatic clinical trial will address this gap in the delivery of goal-directed emergency care of older adults. PRIM-ER will implement primary palliative care in a diverse group of 35 emergency departments. The trial will test the hypothesis that older patients with serious, life-limiting illness who receive care from clinicians with primary palliative care skills are less likely to be admitted to inpatient settings, are more likely to be discharged home or to palliative care service, and will have higher home health and hospice use, fewer inpatient days and intensive care unit admissions at 6 months, and longer survival than patients receiving care before implementation of the intervention.

“Giving emergency nurses, physician assistants, doctors the knowledge and skills they need to better care for patients with serious illness will ease symptom burden, improve quality of life, and get patients to the places where they want to be at the end of life.”

As a new addition to the NIH Collaboratory’s family of innovative NIH Collaboratory Trials, the PRIM-ER trial will feature evidence-based, multidisciplinary primary palliative care education; simulation-based workshops on communication in serious illness; clinical decision support, and provider audit and feedback.

PRIM-ER is led by principal investigator Dr. Corita Grudzen of New York University with support from the National Institute on Aging and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Watch a video interview with Dr. Grudzen, and read more about PRIM-ER.

August 28, 2018: Spotlight on a New NIH Collaboratory Trial: Nudge

Posted on by Damon Seils

More than half of patients with prescriptions for cardiovascular medications do not take their medications as prescribed. These patients are at greater risk of death and comorbid conditions and have higher healthcare costs. Strategies to improve medication adherence have had mixed results. Meanwhile, advances in mobile and digital technologies for health promotion and disease self-management offer new opportunities to influence patients’ health behaviors and improve health outcomes.

“One of the real benefits of using technology is that it can be widely disseminated. Studying that dissemination process is really where we are in the field. So a pragmatic trial makes a lot of sense.” — Sheana Bull, PhD, MPH

The NIH Collaboratory is pleased to welcome the Personalized Patient Data and Behavioral Nudges to Improve Adherence to Chronic Cardiovascular Medications (Nudge) study to its portfolio of NIH Collaboratory Trials. The Nudge study will use mobile phone text messages and an artificial intelligence chatbot to deliver behavioral “nudges” to patients to improve medication adherence. The study will access population-level pharmacy data in 3 integrated healthcare delivery systems to test the effectiveness of the nudges on adherence and outcomes among patients with chronic cardiovascular conditions who take medications to treat hypertension, atrial fibrillation, coronary artery disease, diabetes, or hyperlipidemia.

The Nudge study is led by co–principal investigators Drs. Sheana Bull and Michael Ho of the University of Colorado with support from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Watch a video interview with Drs. Bull and Ho, and read more about Nudge.

 

August 23, 2018: PROVEN Team Uses PRECIS-2 to Evaluate Ongoing Trial Implementation

Posted on by Damon Seils

A tool used to rate how the design of a pragmatic clinical trial will influence the real-world applicability of its results can also be used in real time to assess the impact of changes in trial implementation, a recent study published in Trials found.

When designing a pragmatic trial to test the effectiveness of an intervention under "real-world" conditions, researchers use the Pragmatic Explanatory Continuum Indicator Summary-2 (PRECIS-2) to assess how a variety of design features may affect the applicability of trial results for the intended users. A pragmatic trial differs from a traditional "explanatory" trial, which tests the efficacy of an intervention under ideal conditions. PRECIS-2 rates design features on a scale from "explanatory" to "pragmatic" within several domains. The end users of trial results, such as health care systems, may need the results to be more or less "pragmatic" on the explanatory–pragmatic spectrum in order to implement the intervention in their own care delivery settings.

In a novel effort, researchers with the Pragmatic Trial of Video Education in Nursing Homes (PROVEN) used PRECIS-2 during the conduct of the trial to assess the effects of midtrial changes in implementation. PROVEN, an ongoing NIH Collaboratory Trial, is a pragmatic, cluster randomized trial evaluating the effectiveness of video-assisted decision support tools for advance care planning in nursing homes.

In the initial design of PROVEN, design features in the implementation-focused domains of PRECIS-2 were relatively pragmatic, especially in the domain measuring flexibility in the delivery of the intervention. As the trial progressed, adaptations in implementation that were necessary to address challenges in monitoring and protocol adherence led to more explanatory approaches. The investigators concluded that some pragmatic trials, such as those conducted in complex health care systems like nursing homes, "may benefit from a more dynamic approach to implementation which allows for fluidity between pragmatic and explanatory features." PRECIS-2 can be useful in evaluating the impact of midtrial adaptations with these dynamic approaches to trial implementation.

PROVEN is one of the first large-scale pragmatic trials to be conducted in nursing homes. Learn more about PRECIS-2 in the Living Textbook.

August 20, 2018: Spotlight on a New NIH Collaboratory Trial: EMBED

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

The NIH Collaboratory is pleased to introduce the Pragmatic Trial of User-Centered Clinical Decision Support to Implement Emergency Department-Initiated Buprenorphine for Opioid Use Disorder (EMBED). Led by co–principal investigators Dr. Ted Melnick and Dr. Gail D’Onofrio of Yale University, and supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, EMBED is a pragmatic, multicenter, group-randomized trial that will implement and evaluate a user-centered clinical decision support tool to facilitate the initiation of buprenorphine/naloxone therapy for opioid use disorder in emergency departments.

The intervention consists of computerized treatment guidance for emergency department physicians and is embedded in the existing care delivery workflow. By conducting the study under real-world conditions and employing passive collection of structured data from the electronic health record, EMBED will use an innovative approach to address public health concerns about opioid use in the United States. Watch a video interview with Dr. Melnick, and read more about EMBED.

“This is an area where there is already good efficacy data for the practice of ED-initiated buprenorphine treatment for patients with opioid use disorder, but the practice is not part of routine care right now.” — Ted Melnick, MD, MHS

 

EMBED is 1 of 6 new large-scale clinical trials launched by the NIH Collaboratory in 2018. The NIH Collaboratory Trials are multicenter pragmatic trials that engage healthcare delivery systems in research partnerships to gather real-world evidence and answer clinical questions of major public health importance. Learn more about the NIH Collaboratory Trials.

August 10, 2018: STOP CRC Trial Finds Higher Rates of Colorectal Cancer Screening in Community Clinics Using an EHR-Based Outreach Tool

Posted on by Damon Seils

The primary results of the Strategies and Opportunities to Stop Colorectal Cancer in Priority Populations (STOP CRC) trial, an NIH Collaboratory Trial, were published online this week in JAMA Internal Medicine. The analysis found that colorectal cancer screening rates were higher in community clinics that implemented a mailed fecal immunochemical test (FIT) outreach program than in clinics that practiced usual care. The improved screening rates occurred despite low and highly variable rates of implementation of the program among participating clinics.

Almost half of eligible adults in the United States are not up to date with recommended screening for colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Screening rates are especially low among racial/ethnic minority and low-income populations, including those served at federal qualified health center clinics.

The STOP CRC trial tested a program to improve colorectal cancer screening rates in 26 clinics within 8 federally qualified health centers. The intervention involved embedding a tool in the electronic health record to identify patients who were overdue for colorectal cancer screening, mailing a FIT kit and reminder letter to eligible patients, and implementing a practice improvement process at participating clinics. Of the 26 clinics in the study, 13 received the intervention and 13 practiced usual care.

Compared with clinics that practiced usual care, intervention clinics had a significantly higher proportion of participants who completed a FIT (3.4 percentage points) and any colorectal cancer screening (3.8 percentage points). The higher screening rates occurred despite another important finding of the study, that low rates of implementation of the intervention were common. Higher rates of implementation were correlated with higher rates of FIT completion.

The STOP CRC experience offers lessons on how to use electronic health records to improve guideline-based screening. In a recent NIH Collaboratory Grand Rounds, investigators Dr. Gloria Coronado and Dr. Beverly Green presented findings from the trial and lessons from the implementation of the intervention. Download a study snapshot about the STOP CRC trial.

Additional reading:

Read the press release from the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research: Community Health Centers Can Help Boost Rates of Colorectal Cancer Screening, Kaiser Permanente Study Shows

Read Dr. Beverly Green’s blog post on the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute’s Healthy Findings blog: Community Health Centers Can Boost Colon Cancer Screening

August 9, 2018: New Interview with Dr. David Shurtleff about the NIH Collaboratory

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

In a recent video interview, Dr. David Shurtleff, acting director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), discusses the unique work of the Collaboratory in bringing together multiple NIH Institutes and Centers to develop best practices, methods, guidance, and tools for conducting rigorous pragmatic research.

“The Collaboratory has been transformative in how it’s developed a novel, supportive infrastructure to conduct pragmatic research in a way that allows it to be embedded within healthcare systems.” David Shurtleff, PhD