A randomised controlled trial of the effect of educational outreach by community pharmacists on prescribing in UK general practice.

BACKGROUND

Educational outreach visits are commonly used to promote changes in prescribing in family practice. However, the effectiveness of outreach visits has not been evaluated across a range of settings.

AIM

To estimate the effectiveness of educational outreach visits on United Kingdom (UK) general practice prescribing and to examine the extent to which practice characteristics influenced outcome.

DESIGN OF STUDY

Randomised controlled trial.

SETTING

General practices in 12 health authorities in England.

METHOD

Educational outreach visits were made to practices that received two of four guidelines. Each practice provided data on treatment of patients for all four guidelines for both pre and post-intervention periods. The primary outcome is average effect across all four guidelines. Secondary analyses examined the predictive effect of practice and guideline characteristics.

RESULTS

Seventy per cent of practices approached agreed to take part in the intervention. Overall, educational outreach was associated with a significant improvement in prescribing practice (odds ratio [OR] = 1.24 [95% CI = 1.07 to 1.42]), a 5.2% (95% CI = 1.7% to 8.7%) increase in the number of patients treated within the guideline recommendations. Smaller practices (two or fewer full-time equivalent practitioners) responded much more favourably to educational outreach than larger practices. Smaller practices improved their performance in line with the guidelines by 13.5% (95% CI = 6% to 20.9%) attributable to outreach, while larger practices improved by only 1.4% (95% CI = -2.4% to 5.3%, P-value for interaction <0.001).

CONCLUSION

In large practices, educational outreach alone is unlikely to achieve worthwhile change. There is good evidence to support the use of educational outreach visits in small practices.