• Sameer Malhotra, Adam D Cheriff, J Travis Gossey, Curtis L Cole, Rainu Kaushal, and Jessica S Ancker.
• Department of Healthcare Policy and Research, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA Physician Organization, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA sam2032@med.cornell.edu.
• J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2016 Sep 1; 23 (5): 891-8.

ObjectiveIncreasing the use of generic medications could help control medical costs. However, educational interventions have limited impact on prescriber behavior, and e-prescribing alerts are associated with high override rates and alert fatigue. Our objective was to evaluate the effect of a less intrusive intervention, a redesign of an e-prescribing interface that provides default options intended to "nudge" prescribers towards prescribing generic drugs.MethodsThis retrospective cohort study in an academic ambulatory multispecialty practice assessed the effects of customizing an e-prescribing interface to substitute generic equivalents for brand-name medications during order entry and allow a one-click override to order the brand-name medication.ResultsAmong drugs with generic equivalents, the proportion of generic drugs prescribed more than doubled after the interface redesign, rising abruptly from 39.7% to 95.9% (a 56.2% increase; 95% confidence interval, 56.0-56.4%; P < .001). Before the redesign, generic drug prescribing rates varied by therapeutic class, with rates as low as 8.6% for genitourinary products and 15.7% for neuromuscular drugs. After the redesign, generic drug prescribing rates for all but four therapeutic classes were above 90%: endocrine drugs, neuromuscular drugs, nutritional products, and miscellaneous products.DiscussionChanging the default option in an e-prescribing interface in an ambulatory care setting was followed by large and sustained increases in the proportion of generic drugs prescribed at the practice.ConclusionsDefault options in health information technology exert a powerful effect on user behavior, an effect that can be leveraged to optimize decision making.© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

17 keywords...

hide…