Physician alerts to prevent symptomatic venous thromboembolism in hospitalized patients.

Background: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis remains underused among hospitalized patients. We designed and carried out a large, multicenter, randomized controlled trial to test the hypothesis that an alert from a hospital staff member to the attending physician will reduce the rate of symptomatic VTE among high-risk patients not receiving prophylaxis.

Methods And Results: We enrolled patients using a validated point score system to detect hospitalized patients at high risk for symptomatic VTE who were not receiving prophylaxis.