Rationale: Although it is recommended to restrict long-term use of benzodiazepines, and considerable attention has been paid to this, long-term use continues to be a problem. An informative discontinuation letter for patients has been shown to reduce long-term benzodiazepine use in general practice. However, little is known about its wide scale implementation in primary care.
Objective: To determine the effectiveness of an intensive support programme for community pharmacies to send discontinuation letters to patients in cooperation with GPs.
Methods: In a cluster randomized trial, 43 control pharmacies received a written manual and 47 experimental pharmacies received an intensive support programme. Primary outcome measures were the percentage of GPs who reviewed and returned lists of eligible patients and the percentage of long-term users who were sent a discontinuation letter within 4 months.
Results: The outcomes did not differ for the experimental versus control groups: 38% and 31% of the GPs, respectively, returned the patient lists; 14% and 10% of all long-term users in the two groups, respectively, received the discontinuation letter within 4 months. Substantially more pharmacies in the experimental group than in the control group finally managed to send discontinuation letters (70% vs. 40%).
Conclusion: About one third of the pharmacies in the control group and two thirds of the pharmacies in the intervention group finally implemented the discontinuation letter. However, this difference was not apparent in the primary outcome measures. It seems crucial to involve GPs more effectively in implementation of the discontinuation letter.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00268775.