Investigators are conducting a pragmatic randomized trial testing the effectiveness of patient and clinician nudge strategies on adherence to lung cancer screening (LCS) \& diagnostic follow-up across eligible primary care clinicians \& patients. Following the trial, a subsample of patients \& clinicians will be invited to one-time semi-structured interview \& survey to identify individual \& system-level factors that may restrict or enhance the impact of strategies.
Investigators will conduct a pragmatic clinical trial with a 2 x 2 factorial design with clinicians that provide care to screening-eligible patients who are overdue for annual screening or diagnostic evaluation. The specific nudge strategies to be tested are: 1) gain-framed messaging delivered via text messaging to prompt patient adherence to LCS guidelines (patient nudges); and 2) electronic health record (EHR) prompts alerting clinicians when their patients are due for annual screening or diagnostic follow-up (clinician nudges). The rationale for this study is that changing external stimuli to encourage adherence to evidence-based LCS guidelines will increase early detection of lung cancer by removing individual and system-level barriers to identifying and prompting patients who are due for care. The central hypothesis is that the combination of patient and clinician strategies will have the greatest effect on increasing adherence because it will target multilevel determinants of lung cancer screening identified in our prior research including limited screening knowledge and suboptimal EHR design. The proposed strategies are designed to support equitable implementation across diverse settings and populations.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
825
Brief persuasive messaging to increase awareness about the importance of annual lung cancer screening and completion of recommended follow-up sent to patients via text message.
EHR-based Prompts - an pended order and message that alerts a clinician if a patient is due for screening or diagnostic follow-up.
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Number of completed annual LCS in patients with a negative baseline screen (Lung Imaging Reporting and Data System (Lung-RADS) 1 or 2).
Number of completed low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) scans among adults who are due for annual screening based on evidence-based guidelines.
Time frame: Initial measurement will occur 3 months after randomization
Number of completed recommended diagnostic follow-up scans or procedures in patients with a positive baseline screen (Lung-RADS 3 or 4a).
Completion of recommended diagnostic follow-up scans or procedures among adults with positive baseline LDCT scan.
Time frame: Initial measurement will occur 3 months after randomization
Reach
Reach defined by proportion of patients who receive patient nudges and by the proportion of patients whose clinician acts upon clinician nudge (i.e., signs pended orders)
Time frame: Initial measurement will occur 3 months after randomization
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