Conservative Prescribing: Prescriber Profiling and Education Project

The overall project goal is to develop and conduct a preliminary test of the usefulness of a set of computerized measures of conservative prescribing behavior at four different medical centers. Specific Aims: Aim 1. Create and test a multi-component set of metrics for measuring prescribing behaviors/practices related to key conservative prescribing principles. Aim 2. Apply the conservative prescribing metrics from Aim 1 to four large diverse outpatient-prescribing databases. Aim 3. Correlate selected process and clinical outcomes with conservative prescribing behaviors in the above four organizations. Aim 4. Develop and conduct an educational campaign related to four key conservative principles. Northwestern SOW: As one of three collaborating centers, Northwestern will be assisting in developing the prescriber profiling metrics and locally securing and analyzing the data from its organization to create and evaluate the prescriber conservative prescribing data sets and metrics. Additionally, the Northwestern Communication Institute, led by Dr. Lambert, will be key in the development and promotion of the educational objectives in Aim 4.