Using text and charts to provide social norm feedback to general practices with high overall and high broad-spectrum antibiotic prescribing: a series of national randomised controlled trials

Gold, Natalie ORCID: 0000-0003-0706-1618, Sallis, Anna, Saei, Ayoub, Arambepola, Rohan, Watson, Robin, Bowen, Sarah, Franklin, Matija and Chadborn, Tim (2022) Using text and charts to provide social norm feedback to general practices with high overall and high broad-spectrum antibiotic prescribing: a series of national randomised controlled trials. Trials, 23 (1). ISSN 1745-6215

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Abstract

Background: Sending a social norms feedback letter to general practitioners who are high prescribers of antibiotics has been shown to reduce antibiotic prescribing. The 2017-9 Quality Premium for primary care in England sets a target for broad-spectrum prescribing, which should be at or below 10% of total antibiotic prescribing. We tested a social norm feedback letter that targeted broad-spectrum prescribing and the addition of a chart to a text-only letter that targeted overall prescribing. Methods: We conducted three 2-armed randomised controlled trials, on different groups of practices: Trial A compared a broad-spectrum message and chart to the standard-practice overall prescribing letter (practices whose percentage of broad-spectrum prescribing was above 10% and who had relatively high overall prescribing). Trial C compared a broad-spectrum message and a chart to a no-letter control (practices whose percentage of broad-spectrum prescribing was above 10% and who had relatively moderate overall prescribing). Trial B compared an overall-prescribing message with a chart to the standard practice overall letter (practices whose percentage of broad-spectrum prescribing was below 10% but who had relatively high overall prescribing). Letters were posted to general practitioners, timed to be received on 1 November 2018. The primary outcomes were practices’ percentage of broad-spectrum prescribing (trials A and C) and overall antibiotic prescribing (trial B) each month from November 2018 to April 2019 (all weighted by the number and characteristics of patients registered in the practice). Results: We randomly assigned 1909 practices; 58 closed or merged during the trial, leaving 1851 practices: 385 in trial A, 674 in trial C, and 792 in trial B. AR(1) models showed that there were no statistically significant differences in our primary outcome measures: trial A β = −.199, p =.13; trial C β =.006, p =.95; trial B β = −.0021, p =.81. In all three trials, there were statistically significant time trends, showing that overall antibiotic prescribing and total broad-spectrum prescribing were decreasing. Conclusion: Our broad-spectrum feedback letters had no effect on broad-spectrum prescribing; adding a bar chart to a text-only letter had no effect on overall antibiotic prescribing. Broad-spectrum and overall prescribing were both decreasing over time. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03862794. March 5, 2019.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Authors
Divisions:	CPNSS
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Date Deposited:	13 Jul 2022 15:30
Last Modified:	26 Oct 2024 16:24
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/115548

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