Paper Preview: Implementation of a Consent for Chart Review and Contact

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Guest post by Irena Druce
Our article “Implementation of a Consent for Chart Review and Contact and its Impact in one Clinical Centre” focuses on issues regarding patient health information privacy and recruitment for medical research studies.  Research studies are an integral part of the advancement of medical therapies; however, recruitment into research studies can be challenging.  In Canada, the use of health information is governed by Personal Health Information Protection Act and at our institution a policy is in place that allows only those health professionals directly in the circle of care access to patient information to further protect patient’s privacy.  This policy could have a potential negative effect on recruitment rates into research studies.  Physicians and other clinical personnel often do not have the time to discuss ongoing research projects with patients as time is spent focusing on the patient’s medical issues.  In addition, there is concern that if  physicians use the information that they gather in a clinical encounter to recruit for research studies, it is equivalent to that physician sharing medical information  with someone who does not have a right to it.

In light of these challenges, the Division of Metabolism and Endocrinology at the University of Ottawa implemented a consent for chart review and contact (CCRC).  The CCRC is a document presented to a patient on their first meeting a new physician.  The CCRC gives permission for the patient’s medical file to be reviewed by research personnel to determine whether a patient is eligible for a research study.  If the patient meets the study criteria, the CCRC also grants permission for the patient to be contacted by research personnel to be provided with the details of the research study so they can decide if they wish to participate.

It has been proposed that patients may feel pressured to agree if a  CCRC is presented on their first meeting a new health professional.   Patients may feel that refusing the CCRC would affect the future care they receive.  Our  paper discusses how we have addressed this possible pitfalls with our CCRC document.

In addition, we performed an analysis to assess the impact the CCRC was having at our institution.  We compared the basic demographics of the patients who did and did not agree to the CCRC.  Furthermore, we analysed our centre’s recruitment rate into a known, ongoing, multi-centre, international trial.  Of the participating centres, we found that our institution had some of the highest recruitment rates into the trial, and that the majority of our patients were being recruited via our novel approach of the CCRC.  It is not certain that the use of a CCRC would consistently translate into higher recruitment, but certainly our experience has been encouraging.  Data suggest that participation in research trials has been decreasing in recent years.  Any measure to preserve recruitment may be beneficial, especially a measure which allows for the conduction of research, without having to sacrifice any patient rights with regards to privacy and confidentiality.

Read the paper here.

 

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