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Background: Methods of sustaining the deimplementation of overused medical practices (i.e., practices not supported by evidence) are understudied. In pediatric hospital medicine, continuous pulse oximetry monitoring of children with the common viral respiratory illness bronchiolitis is recommended only under specific circumstances. Three national guidelines discourage its use for children who are not receiving supplemental oxygen, but guideline-discordant practice (i.e., overuse) remains prevalent. A 6-hospital pilot of educational outreach with audit and feedback resulted in immediate reductions in overuse; however, the best strategies to optimize sustainment of deimplementation success are unknown., Methods: The Eliminating Monitor Overuse (EMO) trial will compare two deimplementation strategies in a hybrid type III effectiveness-deimplementation trial. This longitudinal cluster-randomized design will be conducted in Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings (PRIS) Network hospitals and will include baseline measurement, active deimplementation, and sustainment phases. After a baseline measurement period, 16-19 hospitals will be randomized to a deimplementation strategy that targets unlearning (educational outreach with audit and feedback), and the other 16-19 will be randomized to a strategy that targets unlearning and substitution (adding an EHR-integrated clinical pathway decision support tool). The primary outcome is the sustainment of deimplementation in bronchiolitis patients who are not receiving any supplemental oxygen, analyzed as a longitudinal difference-in-differences comparison of overuse rates across study arms. Secondary outcomes include equity of deimplementation and the fidelity to, and cost of, each deimplementation strategy. To understand how the deimplementation strategies work, we will test hypothesized mechanisms of routinization (clinicians developing new routines supporting practice change) and institutionalization (embedding of practice change into existing organizational systems)., Discussion: The EMO trial will advance the science of deimplementation by providing new insights into the processes, mechanisms, costs, and likelihood of sustained practice change using rigorously designed deimplementation strategies. The trial will also advance care for a high-incidence, costly pediatric lung disease., Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT05132322 . Registered on November 10, 2021., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Background: Implementation strategies increase the adoption of evidence-based practices, but they require resources. Although information about implementation costs is critical for decision-makers with budget constraints, cost information is not typically reported in the literature. This is at least partly due to a need for clearly defined, standardized costing methods that can be integrated into implementation effectiveness evaluation efforts., Methods: We present a pragmatic approach to systematically estimating detailed, specific resource use and costs of implementation strategies that combine time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC), a business accounting method based on process mapping and known for its practicality, with a leading implementation science framework developed by Proctor and colleagues, which guides specification and reporting of implementation strategies. We illustrate the application of this method using a case study with synthetic data., Results: This step-by-step method produces a clear map of the implementation process by specifying the names, actions, actors, and temporality of each implementation strategy; determining the frequency and duration of each action associated with individual strategies; and assigning a dollar value to the resources that each action consumes. The method provides transparent and granular cost estimation, allowing a cost comparison of different implementation strategies. The resulting data allow researchers and stakeholders to understand how specific components of an implementation strategy influence its overall cost., Conclusion: TDABC can serve as a pragmatic method for estimating resource use and costs associated with distinct implementation strategies and their individual components. Our use of the Proctor framework for the process mapping stage of the TDABC provides a way to incorporate cost estimation into implementation evaluation and may reduce the burden associated with economic evaluations in implementation science.

Background: Urban schools lag behind non-urban schools in attending to the behavioral health needs of their students. This is especially evident with regard to the level of use of evidence-based interventions with school children. Increased used of evidence-based interventions in urban schools would contribute to reducing mental health services disparities in low-income communities. School-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) is a service delivery framework that can be used to deliver universal preventive interventions and evidence-based behavioral health treatments, such as group cognitive behavioral therapy. In this article, we describe our ongoing research on creating internal capacity for program implementation. We also examine the cost-effectiveness and resulting school climate when two different levels of external support are provided to personnel as they implement a two-tier SWPBIS program., Methods/design: The study follows six K - 8 schools in the School District of Philadelphia randomly assigned to consultation support or consultation-plus-coaching support. Participants are: approximately 48 leadership team members, 180 school staff and 3,900 students in Tier 1, and 12 counselors, and 306 child participants in Tier 2. Children who meet inclusion criteria for Tier 2 will participate in group cognitive behavioral therapy for externalizing or anxiety disorders. The study has three phases, baseline/training, implementation, and sustainability. We will measure implementation outcomes, service outcomes, child outcomes, and cost., Discussion: Findings from this study will provide evidence as to the appropriateness of school-wide prevention and treatment service delivery models for addressing services disparities in schools. The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness analyses of the two levels of training and consultation should help urban school districts and policymakers with the planning and deployment of cost-effective strategies for the implementation of evidence-based interventions for some of the most common behavioral health problems in school children., Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01941069.