New AHRQ-Funded Study Finds Electronic Health Record-Based Reminders Improve Tobacco Cessation Treatment

Primary care clinicians counsel patients to quit smoking more often when they are prompted by an electronic health record, according to a new study supported by AHRQ and NIH’s National Cancer Institute. Clinicians participating in the study were part of the Partners Primary Care Practice- Based Research Network, a group of 26 primary care practices that currently use a Web-based electronic health record and are affiliated with Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Clinicians in an intervention group received tobacco treatment-related reminders and icons; more than 40 percent of them used a new “Tobacco Smart Form,” an addition to the electronic health record that prompted them to provide a range of smoking cessation interventions. Among patients who were smokers at the start of the study, more than twice as many (5.3 percent), who went to practices with the prompts or the form quit smoking by the end of the study, largely due to followup with a tobacco counselor (3.9 percent). The research is published in the April 27 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. Source: AHRQ News and Numbers, May 13, 2009, Issue #275.