AAAAI recruiting primary care practices for asthma outcomes study

Guidelines have been developed for the appropriate care and management of patients with asthma, but there is a mounting body of evidence suggesting that there is a large disparity between the development and the actual implementation of guideline-driven asthma care in primary and specialty care practices. This may in part be due to the challenges primary care physicians have in taking the voluminous guidelines and streaming them into the practical world of patient care. This study will examine whether the use of the ASTHMA IQ for primary care tool (www.asthmaiq.org) will improve asthma care and asthma outcomes using a randomized trial of the ASTHMA IQ system versus usual asthma care in the primary care setting.

The study is currently recruiting an additional 10 primary care practices (family medicine, pediatrics or internal medicine). We are looking for small to medium sized practices with 2-4 physicians. Each participating physician will be asked to recruit a minimum of 10 patients age 12 and above wtih a history of chronic persisten asthma requiring controller therapy. You may participate if you are already using an EMR or if you are still using paper charts.

Physicians and patients will be compensated for their participating in the study. For more information, contact Mindy Spano (mspano@aafp.org) or Karen Sparks (ksparks@aafp.org) at the AAFP NRN. Our goal is to have all practices recruited by October 31.