Can Tailored Patient Letters Improve The Quality Of Diabetic Patient Care?

Diabetes Mellitus Clinical Trial

Official title:

Can Tailored Patient Letters Improve The Quality Of Diabetic Patient Care?"

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT00984841
• Other study ID #: STRP001
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• First received: September 24, 2009
• Last updated: September 24, 2009
• Start date: January 2009
• Est. completion date: July 2009

Study information

• Verified date: September 2009
• Source: Scranton-Temple Residency Program
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Health authority: United States: Institutional Review Board
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

The purpose of this study is to determine if tailored letters sent to diabetic patients will improve care of diabetes.

Description:

Diabetes care in the US is less than optimal. Some authors have found that targeted patient letters are also an effective tool to improve outcomes when they are part of a comprehensive disease management plan. Local patient satisfaction surveys had revealed that many patients had sub‐optimal understanding of diabetes measures and of the importance of controlling these measures to reduce diabetic complications. We wondered if tailored patient letters and enclosed lab orders when due might increase patient awareness of diabetes measures and increase patient engagement.We hypothesized that the addition of targeted patient letters with enclosed lab orders to an ongoing performance improvement program would further improve diabetes care.

We conducted a randomized controlled study of tailored patient letters and diabetes lab orders at our two resident‐based clinics.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 467
• Est. completion date: July 2009
• Est. primary completion date: April 2009
• Accepts healthy volunteers: No
• Gender: Both
• Age group: 18 Years to 75 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• All active patients age 18 to 75 years with a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus were eligible.

• An active patient was defined as one having an ICD-9 code on the active problem list identifying the patient as diabetic, and a progress note in the EMR associated with an office visit within the prior 12 months.

Exclusion Criteria:

Study Design

Allocation: Randomized, Endpoint Classification: Efficacy Study, Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment, Masking: Open Label, Primary Purpose: Health Services Research

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Diabetes Mellitus

Intervention

Other:
• Tailored letter

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	Scranton-Temple Health Center	Scranton	Pennsylvania

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Scranton-Temple Residency Program

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Diabetes summary quality measure		4 months	No