Quantitative and qualitative impact of One Key Question on primary care providers' contraceptive counseling at routine preventive health visits

Abstract

Objectives: One Key Question (OKQ) is a clinical screening tool to assess pregnancy desire in the next year. We aimed to 1) describe the effect of OKQ implementation on contraceptive counseling rates at preventive health visits and 2) evaluate primary care providers' perception of OKQ implementation on their contraceptive counseling practices.

Study design: We performed a quantitative retrospective chart review of preventive health visits at eight federally qualified health centers in Utah between 2014 and 2017. Implementation of OKQ included a brief training and inclusion of OKQ in the electronic medical record. Providers received OKQ training in August 2015 and re-training in March 2017. We assessed OKQ and contraceptive counseling documentation rates using interrupted-time-series analysis. We then conducted semi-structured interviews with providers and queried them about the impact of OKQ. We identified dominant themes using modified grounded theory to create an explanatory framework.

Results: Abstracting 6634 charts yielded 9840 visits with 56 unique providers (51% physician assistant, 34% physician, 14% nurse practitioner). Interrupted-time-series analysis showed a documentation increase of OKQ in late 2015 (2.6%) and again in spring 2017 (9%), however rates remained low. Contraceptive counseling rates (39.7%) did not change after OKQ implementation. Charts with evidence of a current contraceptive method were less likely to have a OKQ response documented. Interviewees reported OKQ's algorithm did not alter their contraceptive counseling.

Conclusions: OKQ did not change documented rates of contraceptive counseling and uptake was low in quantitative and qualitative analyses. Our study suggests limited usefulness of OKQ in the primary care setting.

Implications: Implementation of the One Key Question tool through training and optional EHR field did not increase documented rates of contraceptive counseling in a large federally qualified health center or affect provider contraceptive counseling. Our study suggests limited usefulness of OKQ as a robust screening tool in this primary care setting.

Keywords: Contraceptive counseling; Preventive health care One Key Question; Primary care; qualitative.