Bolstering the Business Case for Adoption of Shared Decision-Making Systems in Primary Care: Randomized Controlled Trial

BackgroundLimited budgets may often constrain the ability of health care delivery systems to adopt shared decision-making (SDM) systems designed to improve clinical encounters with patients and quality of care. ObjectiveThis study aimed to assess the impact of an SDM system shown to improve diabetes and cardiovascular patient outcomes on factors affecting revenue generation in primary care clinics. MethodsAs part of a large multisite clinic randomized controlled trial (RCT), we explored the differences in 1 care system between clinics randomized to use an SDM intervention (n=8) versus control clinics (n=9) regarding the (1) likelihood of diagnostic coding for cardiometabolic conditions using the 10th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) and (2) current procedural terminology (CPT) billing codes. ResultsAt all 24,138 encounters with care gaps targeted by the SDM system, the proportion assigned high-complexity CPT codes for level of service 5 was significantly higher at the intervention clinics (6.1%) compared to that in the control clinics (2.9%), with P8% (n=8463), 7.2% vs 3.4%, P30 kg/m2 (n=19,838), 6.2% vs 2.9%, P<.001, and adjusted OR 1.45 (95% CI 0.75-2.8). Compared to control clinics, intervention clinics assigned ICD-10 diagnosis codes more often for observed cardiometabolic conditions with care gaps, although the difference did not reach statistical significance. ConclusionsIn this randomized study, use of a clinically effective SDM system at encounters with care gaps significantly increased the proportion of encounters assigned high-complexity (level 5) CPT codes, and it was associated with a nonsignificant increase in assigning ICD-10 codes for observed cardiometabolic conditions. Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT 02451670; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT 0245167