Warning letters to primary care physicians (PCPs) regarding overprescription of quetiapine were helpful in reducing overprescribing of this agent, new research suggested.
Investigators analyzed data from an earlier trial that compared prescribing patterns in 5055 PCPs who receive a placebo letter or three warning letters informing them that their prescribing of quetiapine was high and under review by Medicare. Patients in question all had dementia and were either living in nursing homes or in the community.
The intervention reduced quetiapine use among all patients with dementia, with no detectable adverse effects on cognitive function, behavioral symptoms, depression, metabolic diagnoses, hospitalization, or death.
“This study found that overprescribing warning letters to PCPs safely reduced quetiapine prescribing to their patients with dementia,” investigators led by Adam Sacarny, PhD, of the Department of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, wrote.
“This intervention and other[s] like it may be useful for future efforts to promote guideline-concordant care,” they add.
The study was published online on April 25, 2024, in JAMA Network Open.
Off-label Prescribing Common
The off-label use of antipsychotics in patients with dementia is fairly common, the investigators noted, affecting roughly one in seven nursing home residents and a similar number of community-dwelling older adults with dementia.
The agents are often prescribed to treat behavioral symptoms associated with dementia, including agitation and aggression. Although some evidence supports this use, antipsychotics in dementia patients can also cause an increased risk for weight gain, cognitive decline, falls and other injuries, cerebrovascular events, and mortality.
While some professional societies have called for “judicious use of antipsychotics in dementia care,” there is little evidence that reducing antipsychotic use in people with dementia might result in a benefit, investigators wrote.
The researchers analyzed data from a previous trial that focused on quetiapine, which is the most prescribed antipsychotic in the United States and is frequently used for patients with dementia.
In the original study, 2528 PCPs received a placebo letter and 2527 received three warning letters sent by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which identified the highest-volume PCP prescribers of quetiapine.
The warning letters stated that the recipient’s quetiapine prescribing was high relative to their peers and was under review by Medicare. The placebo letter clarified an unrelated regulation.
The current secondary analysis followed the providers and a cohort of their patients from their first receipt of the letters in 2015 through April 2017. The current evaluation analyzes patients’ outcomes through December 2018, utilizing Medicare fee-for-service claims, Minimum Data Set nursing home assessment, and Medicare enrollment data.
Low-Cost, Effective Intervention
While the original study focused on total quetiapine prescribing by study PCPs, the current analysis focused on patients’ total quetiapine use per 90-day period. Additional secondary outcomes included measures of cognitive function and behavioral symptoms, indicators of depression, metabolic diagnoses, indicators of use of hospital and healthcare services, and death.
PCPs in the study had a total of 84,881 patients with dementia living in nursing homes and 261,288 living in the community. At baseline, there were 92,874 patients (mean age, 82 years; 69% female).
The warning letters were associated with reduced quetiapine use among both nursing home patients and community-dwelling patients (adjusted difference, –0.7 days; P = .02 and adjusted difference, −1.5 days; P < .001, respectively).
Among nursing home patients, there were no statistically significant adverse changes in cognitive of behavioral health measures that coincided with reduction in quetiapine use.
Although a higher percentage of treatment vs control patients reported weight loss, the difference was not significant, and rates of metabolic diagnoses were similar in both groups. There were also no significant differences between the groups in emergency department use, inpatient hospital admission, or use of restraints.
Results were similar for patients living in the community.
Additionally, no adverse effects on more severe health endpoints, including rates of hospital use or entry to nursing facilities, were detected. Importantly, the risk for death was statistically significantly lower for patients whose PCPs had received warning letters vs control patients (P = .04).
The analysis “provides evidence that a low-cost letter intervention informed by behavioral science can reduce prescribing of quetiapine to patients with dementia in nursing home and community settings,” the authors wrote.
Researchers did not directly observe the administration of the medication but instead used prescription drug fills as a proxy. Moreover, they could not observe results for patients enrolled in Medicare Advantage, and claims-based and assessment-based outcomes might have been subject to measurement errors and under-ascertainment of diagnoses.
The authors received support from the National Institute on Aging. They reported no relevant financial relationships.
Batya Swift Yasgur MA, LSW is a freelance writer with a counseling practice in Teaneck, NJ. She is a regular contributor to numerous medical publications, including Medscape and WebMD, and is the author of several consumer-oriented health books as well as Behind the Burqa: Our Lives in Afghanistan and How We Escaped to Freedom (the memoir of two brave Afghan sisters who told her their story).