Utilization of a Best Practice Alert (BPA) at Point-of-Care for Recruitment into a US-Based Autism Research Study.
Andrea R Simon, Kelli L Ahmed, Danica L Limon and 3 others
PMID 35089434WHAT IT FOUND
An electronic alert prompting clinicians to mention an autism study increased recruitment and completion.
Patients referred via this alert were more likely to finish the study than those recruited by other methods, with non-white patients showing particularly high completion rates.
Key findings
01Participants recruited via the electronic alert had a significantly higher study completion rate (58.3%) compared to those recruited through other methods (35.5%).
02Among participants recruited via the alert, non-white patients completed the study at a significantly higher rate (68.3%) than white patients (54.1%).
03Over half of the patients who triggered the alert (51.7%) had a response recorded by their provider, with 64.0% of those indicating interest in the study.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was conducted at a single academic medical center, which may limit generalizability to other clinical settings. Follow-up schedules for contacting interested patients were inconsistent due to staff availability, which may have influenced enrollment and completion rates. Providers who did not respond to the BPA survey may have had different experiences or opinions, leading to potential selection bias in the feedback data. The broad eligibility criteria for the SPARK study resulted in a high volume of alerts, which may have contributed to provider frustration and inconsistent engagement. It is possible that some patients indicated interest due to acquiescence bias or that providers recorded responses without fully discussing the study, which could affect the validity of the 'Interested' metric.
Declared interests
The study was conducted in collaboration with the Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge (SPARK). The text does not explicitly state funding sources for this specific implementation study, but it notes the partnership with the SPARK study team and the use of their infrastructure.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that the higher completion rate among non-white participants recruited via the BPA indicates that the alert itself reduces racial disparities in research participation. The study design did not control for confounding variables such as socioeconomic status, language, or specific clinic populations, and the disparity in completion rates between white and non-white participants was not observed in the group recruited through other methods.