NCT04298762

The Effect of Peer Comparison Emails on Oncologists' Documentation of Cancer Stage

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 56 (actual)
• Sponsor: Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: —
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Documenting cancer stage is the most important determinant of treatment approach and survival for cancer patients. However, oncologists do not routinely document a patient's cancer stage in the structured field in electronic health records. This quality improvement pilot study evaluated the impact of sending an email to physicians at a cancer center of a large academic hospital with individualized data on their rates of cancer stage documentation using a structured field. The investigators assessed patient-level documentation and physician-level rates of staging documentation over 15 months including a three-month pre-period, a six-month pilot phase and a six-month follow-up period. The investigators also estimated staging documentation rates separately for each physician's new versus established patients.

Conditions

• Oncology

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	No peer comparison email	The comparison group received no email communication on their cancer stage documentation activity.
OTHER	Peer comparison email	The intervention group received three separate emails with individualized data on their cancer stage documentation activity in the previous 1-3 months. The email described the number and percent of attributed patients for whom cancer stage was documented, and included a figure showing their staging documentation rate compared to their peers.

Timeline

• Start date: 2018-07-01
• Primary completion: 2019-09-30
• Completion: 2019-09-30
• First posted: 2020-03-06
• Last updated: 2020-03-06

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States