STUN (STop UNhealthy) Alcohol Use Now! Implementing Evidence-Based Services for Unhealthy Alcohol Use in Primary Care

The STUN (STop UNhealthy) Alcohol Use Now! Project: Using Practice Facilitation to Disseminate and Implement Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) Evidence on Screening and Management of Unhealthy Alcohol Use in Primary Care

STUN Alcohol Use Now is an intervention designed to use primary care practice support services (practice facilitation) to help small to medium-size practices (10 or fewer providers) identify and provide services for people with unhealthy alcohol use. The original recruitment goal was 135 primary care practices in North Carolina, which we were unable to meet due to pandemic-related barriers.

STUN Alcohol Use Now is an intervention designed to use primary care practice support services (practice facilitation or PF) to help small to medium-size practices (10 or fewer providers) identify and provide services for people with unhealthy alcohol use. 135 primary care practices in North Carolina will be recruited.

Specific Aim 1 will evaluate the effect of PF on uptake of evidence-based screening and brief intervention (SBI) for unhealthy alcohol use. The investigators hypothesize that PF will increase screening for unhealthy alcohol use and provision of brief counseling. The secondary hypothesis is that practice-level and contextual factors (capacity for quality improvement, organizational readiness to implement change, and implementation climate) will moderate the effect of PF on use of evidence-based screening and brief intervention (SBI) for unhealthy alcohol use.

Specific Aim 2 will evaluate whether PF increases provision, among those identified as having an alcohol use disorder (AUD), provision of medication assisted treatment (MAT) or referral to specialty care.

Aim 3 (effect of providing embedded telehealth services) will not be evaluated due to lower enrollment than anticipated and delayed data collection (both related to the COVID-19 pandemic) which have prevented randomization among practices with slower uptake of SBI after 6 months of PF.

In Aim 4 the investigators will evaluate the effect of PF on the implementation of clinical practice and office systems changes to improve evidence-based SBI and MAT. The primary hypothesis is that PF will increase implementation of clinical practice and office systems changes to improve evidence-based SBI and MAT. The secondary hypotheses are that (a) practice capacity for quality improvement (QI), organizational readiness to implement change, and contextual factors will moderate the effect of PF on the implementation of clinical practice and office systems changes and (b) embedded telehealth services will increase implementation of clinical practice and office systems changes among practices with slower uptake.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Small-to-medium sized primary care practices (10 or fewer providers) in North Carolina

Exclusion Criteria:

• Practices with fewer than 100 adult patients (18+ years) or more than 10 providers;
• practices unwilling to implement evidence-based screening and management of patients with unhealthy alcohol use.