Cough and cold medicine prescription rates can be significantly reduced by active intervention

Our aim was to construct and test an intervention programme to eradicate cough and cold medicine (CCM) prescriptions for children treated in a nationwide healthcare service company. The study was carried out in the largest private healthcare service company in Finland with a centralised electronic health record system allowing for real-time, doctor-specific practice monitoring. The step-by-step intervention consisted of company-level dissemination of educational materials to doctors and families, educational staff meetings, continuous monitoring of prescriptions, and targeted feedback. Outreach visits were held in noncompliant units. Finally, those physicians who most often prescribed CCM were directly contacted. During the intervention period (2017–2020), there were more than one million paediatric visits. Prescriptions of CCMs to children were completely eradicated in 41% of units and the total number of CCM prescriptions decreased from 6738 to 744 (89%). During the fourth intervention year, CCMs containing opioid derivatives were prescribed for only 0.2% of children aged