Objective: To improve treatment of osteoporosis in older patients with upper extremity fractures.
Background: Osteoporosis causes low bone mass and skeletal fragility leading to fractures of the hip, spine, and upper extremity that cause pain, deformity, disability, and even death. It affects 2 million older Canadians and costs us a billion dollars a year. Guidelines recommend aggressive treatment in older patients with osteoporosis-related fractures because risk of another fracture is 20% within 1-year and because bisphosphonate treatment reduces fracture risk by 50%. Unfortunately, less than 10% of older outpatients are treated for osteoporosis in the year post-fracture and even the most effective multifaceted interventions tested so far (i.e., combinations of patient education with physician guidelines and reminders) have only increased post-fracture osteoporosis treatment rates with bisphosphonates to 22%.
Proposed Strategy: Osteoporosis case-managers will identify older fracture patients in Emergency Departments and Fracture Clinics; arrange bone mineral density (BMD) tests; meet with patients to counsel them and go over their results; and then offer and prescribe bisphosphonate treatment to those with low BMD.
Hypothesis: An osteoporosis case-manager will effectively and efficiently increase rates of BMD testing and bisphosphonate treatment in older high-risk patients with upper extremity fractures compared with a previously tested effective and cost-saving multifaceted osteoporosis intervention (an active-comparator control consisting of telephone-based education for patients and treatment guidelines with reminders for family physicians).
Specific Aims: To determine whether an osteoporosis case-manager strategy can:
1. Increase rates of osteoporosis treatment more than a multifaceted intervention
2. Increase rates of BMD testing more than a multifaceted intervention
3. Be cost-effective when compared with either multifaceted intervention or usual care
Study Design: Randomized controlled comparative effectiveness trial with blinded (allocation-concealed) ascertainment of outcomes comparing case-managers to the multifaceted intervention. Eligible patients will be 50 years and older with an upper extremity fracture and not already treated with bisphosphonates, recruited from Emergency Departments and Fracture Clinics. Primary outcome will be the proportion starting bisphosphonates within 6-months. Secondary outcomes include BMD testing, any osteoporosis treatment, and appropriate care. Case-managers are expected to increase bisphosphonate treatment rates to 43% (achieved in our pilot trial) vs published multifaceted intervention rates of 22%. With alpha=0.05, beta=0.9, and 10% attrition rates, the total minimum required sample size is 240 patients. Using 1-year outcomes and micro-costing data from the trial and our published Markov decision analytic model for osteoporosis quality improvement interventions, the incremental costs and effectiveness of the case-manager will then be compared to both the multifaceted intervention and usual care. Major secondary outcome includes long-term treatment persistence, and to examine this question (e.g., 80% persistence rates with case-manager vs 50% persistence with multifaceted intervention) will require a sample size of at least 360 patients.
