Assessment of NAMS members' prescription patterns of hormone therapy before and after the 2016 NAMS Annual Meeting.

OBJECTIVE: Hormone therapy (HT) prescription patterns have varied enormously over time and across specialties. The present study attempts to look at practice variation in specific controversial scenarios and to determine if attendance at The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) 2016 Annual Meeting, where the draft of the 2017 NAMS HT Position Statement was presented, had any impact on members' HT prescribing patterns.

METHODS: An anonymous survey with 11 case scenarios was sent to all NAMS members before and after the 2016 NAMS Annual Meeting. Pre- and postmeeting responses were pooled into a single cohort. For those who responded to both surveys, only the postmeeting survey responses were included in the cohort. The impact of attendance at the 2016 NAMS Annual Meeting was investigated by comparing paired responses with "controversial questions" between pre- and postmeeting surveys in the matched population who either attended the 2016 NAMS Annual Meeting (intervention arm) or did not (control arm). "Controversial questions" were defined as those where 25% to 75% of responders answered "YES" to a question. McNemar's test was applied to analyze paired responses using SAS statistical software, with P ≤ 0.05 being considered statistically significant.

RESULTS: A total of 1,786 NAMS members were surveyed before and after the 2016 NAMS meeting, 234 (13%) completed the premeeting survey, 166 (9%) completed the postmeeting survey, and 52 completed both surveys. Of the 52, 27 attended the 2016 NAMS Annual Meeting and 25 did not. The pooled cohort contains 348 responses which represents a 20% response rate. Six complex case scenarios with "controversial questions" were identified from the pooled cohort and reexamined in the intervention and control arm, respectively. In the intervention arm, significant changes toward being more likely to prescribe HT in guideline-consistent cases were noted in four out of six cases, whereas significant changes in HT use were not seen in any of six complex cases in the control arm.

CONCLUSIONS: NAMS members' prescribing patterns of HT vary in complex clinical scenarios. After the 2016 NAMS Annual Meeting where a draft of the 2017 NAMS HT Position Statement was presented and discussed, in four challenging and complex clinical situations a significant number of practitioners changed their prescription patterns toward prescribing HT which was consistent with the new guideline.