Using the nudge method to promote referrals of HBs antigen-/HCV antibody-positive patients from non-hepatology specialty physicians

Abstract

In our hospital, the Infection Control Team (ICT) evaluates patients who test positive for the hepatitis virus during preoperative and preadmission tests (the hepatitis virus round), and adds referral requests to a hepatolo-gist to the electronic medical records of these patients. A review after 1 year of this practice confirmed that number of referrals provided by non-hepatology specialty physicians was low, especially among short-stay inpa-tients. Therefore, we requested referrals using the nudge method in year 2 of the initial infection control train-ing session. This increased the referral consultation rate for short-term hospitalization from 14.3% (3/21) before ICT referral to 31.6% (6/19) in the 1 st year and 66.7% (8/12) in the 2 nd year (vs. before the start, p ＜ 0.01). Thus, the nudge method is effective in promoting voluntary behavior change and can increase rates of referred consulta-tions.