Effect on cessation counseling of documenting smoking status as a routine vital sign: an ACORN study.

Purpose: Guidelines encourage primary care clinicians to document smoking status when obtaining patients' blood pressure, temperature, and pulse rate (vital signs), but whether this practice promotes cessation counseling is unclear. We examined whether the vital sign intervention influences patient-reported frequency and intensity of tobacco cessation counseling.

Methods: This study was a cluster-randomized, controlled trial conducted in the Virginia Ambulatory Care Outcomes Research Network (ACORN).