Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionFebruary 10, 2022 |
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PONE-D-22-04157Impact of systematic medication review in emergency department on patients’ post-discharge outcomes -a randomized controlled clinical trialPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Lisbeth Damlien Nymoen Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by May 08 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
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Kind regards, Larry Allan Weinrauch, MD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 2. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. 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We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. 3. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: In determining the best use of our pharmacy colleagues as part of the treatment team what have you discerned from this interaction? Does pharmacy led parallel intervention trigger meaningful interaction or discussion with the ED team? This effort was a "gatekeeper in" effort, and meaningful interaction with the team might have been helpful early in the stay, however with handoffs of care within the hospital and outside of the hospital these discussions get lost or fumbled. As such, are our outcomes suggesting an absence of statistical benefit true, or would we be better off with a "gatekeeper out" effort to drive better outcomes? As you point out, practitioner time is limited. How can we best husband our resources? [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: This is a well-conducted and designed clinical trial with unfortunately negative results. Sample size and randomization are clearly delineated, and statistical plan both per-protocol and intent-to-treat are clearly stated with proper techniques. I have a few minor comments: 1. careful copyediting: Change "Statistics" to "Statistical Analysis" in the section heading; numerous errors (e.g., Pearson chi should be Pearson's chi-square test) 2. EMA guidelines no longer support the use of p-values to determine balance in baseline tables. This is because a p-value>.05 does not mean the null hypothesis is true, along with the issue of multiple testing since .05 is meaningless with so many tests. 3. Again, your statement that significance is set at .05 has no meaning except perhaps for the primary outcome analysis, which is confirmatory, because of the multiple testing issue. Secondary outcomes are either exploratory or there should be a Bonferroni-type correction. 4. In the conclusions, it should be stated as to whether the assumptions underlying the sample size computation were realized (not the sample size itself, but the assumptions). Reviewer #2: TO THE AUTHORS: The group presented an original investigation examining pharmacist-led efforts to improve medication safety during emergency department visits in this analysis. This study represents a continuation of the prior work in terms of scholarly work around the scientific concepts around medications safety within the emergency department environment. I would recommend revising the text to include a specific message, including more data from your cohort, and further refining the presented materials. Nevertheless, the aim of the manuscript should be to clarify the observation within the context of the submitted data and the specifics of the population selection and hopefully more work in the future around specific diagnosis or service line to reduce the heterogeneity of the targeted admissions. Furthermore, the conclusion should focus on extrapolating the results to positively refine the current work and positively impact the care. The presented manuscript could carry a different message regarding the importance of pharmacist-led efforts and the lessons learned for future initiatives. In addition, I have the following suggestions. Suggestions: • Although the rationale for this study and the primary hypothesis is stated clearly, I would recommend revising the introduction and focusing on the unique role of the pharmacist during a hospital visit, see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=pharmacist+led+intervention+medication+reconciliation+admission&sort=pubdate&size=200 • Please provide the number of patients that were considered for the study before they were assessed for eligibility. Please add the number to both the results section and the figure. • Please state clearly why hospitalization to medical or surgical wards was not chosen as the point of randomization but rather all comers to the emergency department, which could include those with high risk and low risk and a vast array of diagnoses • Please provide the clinical characteristics of the population in both arms and compare the number of medications or categories across the two arms • Please state the software name that was used for the analysis • I would recommend shortening the discussion • Please provide a statement about any possible variation of clinical management after the intervention, i.e., is there any reason for the reader to think that the patients in the intervention arm had different standards of care randomly than those in the control arm? In other words, did the intervention of pharmacist-led affect future decisions? during the emergency department stay that could lead to downstream effects of differentiation in the provided quality of care. • Please provide more evidence for choosing your specific endpoints using the presented one; the hospitalization is a specific endpoint; however, it does not capture GP calls, admissions without emergency department visits. Reviewer #3: This is an interesting paper on a randomised trial of pharmacist chart review in patients admitted to the emergency department. This is a complex sort of trial to run and a little harder than the usual drug trial, so the authors are to be commended on what they have done here. As with this sort of trial generally ,the reporting can get complex and as such I have a few areas of clarification: 1. Choice of endpoint - the idea of an unplanned hospital contact makes a lot of sense from a cost and resource point of view, as well as the appropriate severity. One presumes that causality is so woolly that it becomes hard to get to the most sensitive outcome which would be clinically relevant medication error. However, excluding deaths is probably not necessarily appropriate; death is worse than hospitalisation, and certainly unplanned, so at the very least an analysis showing no difference in interpretation if the deaths are included would be important - excluding these patients isn't according to the principle of ITT and the missing data is informatively missing. 2. The authors are to be commended on putting sufficient information in the sample size calculation to make it reproducible 3. Subversion of randomisation - envelopes are of course supremely subvertable; can the authors please confirm that the envelopes were opened in numbered sequence? What was put in place to stop a person opening the envelope before deciding whether or not to enrol? What was the average block length as it is this and not the variability that affects guessing next allocation (see the numerous papers on this) 4. Please do not test the baseline characteristics - if the randomisation works appropriately any differences MUST be down to chance. 5. The confidence intervals for effect do not rule out a 30% reduction in hospital contact - does this not imply the results are inconclusive here 6. It's unclear to me the extent to which pharmacists identify issues as part of routine as opposed to only during the sort of intensive note review here. This could be made clearer - is there also evidence of complete adherence to study protocol in both arms? Is there any chance of dilution of effect because of either a halo effect or because of time pressures lowering adherence? This may be in the bottom of page 17, but it would help to understand whether these pharmacy interventions largely replicated the intervention group and found nothing different (i.e. adherence was about 85% for control and 100% for intervention? ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.
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| Revision 1 |
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Impact of systematic medication review in emergency department on patients’ post-discharge outcomes -a randomized controlled clinical trial PONE-D-22-04157R1 Dear Dr. Lisbeth Damlien Nymoen, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Raphael Cinotti, MD, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed ********** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: (No Response) ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: (No Response) ********** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: (No Response) ********** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: (No Response) ********** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: All my comments were addressed. Congratulations on this scholarly work. Please make sure to upload all Appendix materials as stated. Reviewer #3: (No Response) ********** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No ********** |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-22-04157R1 Impact of systematic medication review in emergency department on patients’ post-discharge outcomes -a randomized controlled clinical trial Dear Dr. Nymoen: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Raphael Cinotti Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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