Recruitment
RECRUITMENT, STAGGERED
Primary care physicians’ offices in the German regions described above were invited to participate by phone call or letter/e-mail including a fax response with their contact details to be called back. A study team member visited all interested practices to hand over questionnaires for data collection. Informed consent was obtained from all the participants. In participating practices, medical assistants were instructed to recruit, within the following 6 weeks, 15–20 study patients who came to the counter to refill their PPI prescriptions in a consecutive manner. After completion of recruitment, the practices sent the patient recruitment lists to their respective study center per mail or fax. Patient recruitment was staggered from November 2018 to July 2019, with the subsequent data assessment period extending from December 2018 to October 2020. After patient recruitment, the practices were randomized.