Saskatchewan Physicians’ Opinions of Their Personalized Prescribing Profiles Related to Opioids, Benzodiazepines, Stimulants, and Gabapentin

Overdoses of prescription medications continue to be a significant concern for health systems around the world. Medical regulators in several jurisdictions have started generating personalized prescribing profiles for individual physicians as an audit and feedback tool to reduce the sub-optimal prescribing of high-risk drugs such as opioids, benzodiazepines and stimulants. However, little is known about how to most effectively communicate the data in these prescriber profiles to the intended recipients. The aim of this study was to collect the opinions of physicians in Saskatchewan, Canada, regarding their personalized prescriber profiles. One-on-one semi-structured interviews were completed in January 2019 with 17 physicians who were given access to personalized profiles containing their prescribing information on opioids, benzodiazepines, stimulants and gabapentin. Interviews were recorded and data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Respondents thought the profiles were a useful tool that had significant potential to improve their prescribing practices. However, many physicians also thought the profiles were confusing and difficult to interpret. Several recommendations were made to improve the prescriber profiles, which may be applicable to other jurisdictions currently using, or planning to develop, similar quality improvement tools. These recommendations include: limiting the use of abbreviations and acronyms; being explicit regarding the intent of the profiles; ensuring comparator data is relevant to the individual recipient; using a combination of numbers and visuals to display data; and providing detailed context regarding what the data means.