A randomized outpatient trial of a decision-support information technology tool.

Background: Decision-support information technology is often adopted to improve clinical decision making, but it is rarely rigorously evaluated. Congress mandated the evaluation of Problem-Knowledge Couplers (PKC Corp, Burlington, Vt), a decision-support tool proposed for the Department of Defense's new health information network.

Methods: This was a patient-level randomized trial conducted at 2 military practices.