High-quality COPD Care for People With Immune Dysfunction Through Proactive E-consults

Emerging data support that barriers to high quality COPD care are likely accentuated in HIV+ persons. Taken together, decreased recognition of smoking, lack of referral for pulmonary evaluation, worse symptoms and greater exacerbation rates point towards low quality of care for COPD in HIV+ patients. Our preliminary data supports that COPD is inadequately managed in HIV+ patients. These data demonstrate that current management of COPD in HIV+ patients do not adhere to guidelines, that ICS may be over-prescribed and long-acting bronchodilators under-utilized, and support the need to improve evidence-based COPD care in HIV+ patients. Appropriate use of COPD therapies is particularly important for HIV+ patients, as side effects and toxicities could be more harmful in HIV+ patients, given their concomitant multimorbidity and polypharmacy. In summary, an intervention to improve the evidence-based delivery of COPD care can improve outcomes for HIV+ patients. Benefits may extend beyond COPD-related measures. Appropriate use of COPD controller medications can decrease symptoms and exacerbations, and improve health-related quality of life. Our proposed study to has a high potential to substantially improve the quality of care for COPD and patient-centered outcomes for a large number of HIV+ Veterans.

This study tests an intervention to promote effective, evidence-based care and de-implement inappropriate therapies for COPD in HIV+ patients. The intervention facilitates specialist support of primary care, which includes infectious disease (ID) physicians who serve as the primary care providers (PCP) for their HIV+ patients in the ID clinic. Rather than relying on referral-driven specialty care, which may be a barrier to access, pulmonologists will proactively support ID providers to manage a population of HIV+ patients with COPD, delivering real-time evidence-based recommendations tailored to the individual HIV+ patient. The investigators will leverage the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) clinical and informatics infrastructures to communicate between intervention-team members developing the recommendations (using VA Extension for Community Health Outcomes [ECHO]) and to patients' clinical providers through the electronic health record (EHR) as an E-consult. To limit the burden on the provider, the intervention team will draft recommendations as preliminary orders for providers to review. To preserve their autonomy, the provider has the discretion to endorse (sign), modify or cancel the orders.

This study uses a two-arm cluster randomized controlled trial intervention design grounded in the chronic care model with outcomes evaluated using the RE-AIM (Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance) framework. The investigators will evaluate barriers and facilitators of optimal COPD care for HIV+ patients, and of effective adoption, implementation and maintenance of the proactive E-consult program, guided by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR).

This study involves the recruitment and enrollment of two populations: providers and patients. Providers will be recruited at the beginning of the study; providers that enroll will be randomly chosen to either provide usual care (control) or to receive E-consults for their HIV+ patients with COPD (intervention). Patients of enrolled providers will be recruited after attending an appointment with their provider. Enrolled patients will be asked to complete a set of surveys, and some patients will be offered the opportunity to participate in an interview about their care.