Impact of Decision Aids to Enhance Shared Decision Making for Diabetes

The proposed trial seeks to determine the impact of patient decision aids versus usual care on measures of patient involvement in decision-making, diabetes care processes, medication adherence, glycemic and cardiovascular risk factor control, and resource utilization in nonurban practices in the Midwestern United States. Upon completion of this trial, the investigators will have new knowledge about both the effectiveness of diabetes decision aids in nonacademic nonurban practices and about the processes that promote or inhibit the successful implementation of patient decision aids in such practices.

Type 2 diabetes causes loss of quality and diminished duration of life for over 24 million Americans with great costs and heavy burden of treatment for both society and for affected families. Decision aids are tools that help clinicians involve patients in making deliberate choices by providing accessible information about the options available and their outcomes. We propose to conduct a cluster randomized trial to obtain an estimate of the impact of patient decision aids versus usual care on measures of patient involvement in decision making, diabetes care processes, medication adherence, glycemic and cardiovascular risk factor control, and resource utilization. Participating clinicians will be trained to use decision aid tools to discuss starting either new diabetes medications or new statins with their enrolled patients. Surveys completed by clinicians and patients will assess satisfaction with decision making and knowledge gained by patients. 3- and 6-month follow-up surveys completed by patients will assess adherence to chosen medications and sustained knowledge. Primary analysis will be conducted utilizing generalized linear models. Some visits will be video and/or audio recorded with permission, and a small subset of patients, clinicians, and support staff will be interviewed by an experienced qualitative researcher using a semi-structured interview guide. Primary care practices were enrolled then matched by size (less than or equal to 2 clinicians or greater than 2 clinicians) and randomly allocated by a statistician to 1) the use of the Diabetes Medication Choice decision aid and usual care for lipid therapy medication (statin) discussion during the encounter with subjects or to 2) the use of the Statin Choice decision aid and usual care for antihyperglycemic mediations discussion during the encounter with subjects.