Can Doctors Change? Attempts to Improve Adherence to the 2013 Statin Guidelines for Diabetic Patients at an Urban Academic Family Medicine Clinic

In November 2013 new statin guidelines were released. Generally, physicians are slow to adopt new guidelines and adherence to new guidelines often remains low even years after they have been issued. In this study, multiple interventions, including patient handouts, email reminders, and education sessions were implemented to increase adherence with new statin prescribing guidelines in a large urban practice. The numbers of prescriptions were analyzed for 6 weeks prior to and 6 weeks after the interventions. Statin prescribing in diabetic patients not already on a statin preintervention was 11.7% and post-intervention was 13.0% (pvalue 0.5936). There was a small increase in prescribing postintervention but no statistical significance. The study was limited by multiple factors leaving room for further research in this area.