Clinical and Economic Results from a Randomized Trial of Clinical Decision Support in a Rural Health Network

Background: Replication studies evaluate technologies in usual use settings. Methods: We conducted a clinical trial to determine whether reductions in clinical and economic results observed in a previous study could be replicated in a larger setting. Subjects were randomized to receive intervention (email notifications for sentinel health events sent to their care managers) or control. Main Outcome Measures: The primary outcome was the rate of emergency department visits for low severity conditions. Secondary outcomes included: medical costs and other clinical event rates. Results: We randomized 13,454 individuals (intervention, 6740; control, 6714). Subjects in both groups had similar rates of clinical events and medical costs. Conclusion: The use of email notifications to care managers was associated with no reductions in clinical events or medical costs.