---
type: source
title: "Penn CHIBE Behavioral Economics Health Interventions: Default Nudges Raise Statin Prescribing from 71% to 92% and Reduce Health Disparities"
author: "Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE), University of Pennsylvania"
url: https://chibe.upenn.edu/chibe-annual-report-2024-2025/
date: 2025-01-01
domain: health
secondary_domains: []
format: report
status: null-result
priority: medium
triage_tag: claim
tags: [behavioral-economics, nudges, default-effects, medication-adherence, health-disparities, EHR]
flagged_for_rio: ["Behavioral economics mechanisms (commitment devices, default effects) are directly relevant to mechanism design in health contexts"]
processed_by: vida
processed_date: 2026-03-18
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
extraction_notes: "LLM returned 2 claims, 2 rejected by validator"
---

## Content

CHIBE 2024-2025 annual report documenting RCT-validated behavioral economics interventions in health.

Key RCT results:

1. **Statin default prescription length (JAMA Internal Medicine):**
   - Intervention: switched EHR default to 90-day supply with 3 refills (opt-out)
   - Result: prescriptions at 90-day supply increased from 71% to 92%
   - Bonus: racial and socioeconomic disparities in prescription length were REDUCED
   - Mechanism: default effect (opt-out vs. opt-in changes clinician behavior)

2. **Opioid prescribing guidelines adherence:**
   - Peer comparison + patient-reported outcomes feedback
   - Adherence increased from 57.2% to 71.8%

3. **Physical activity (Alzheimer's risk):**
   - Game-based intervention with support partner
   - Increased step counts by 1,700 steps/day (equivalent to 70+ miles over intervention)

4. **Healthcare appointments as commitment devices (PMC, 2025):**
   - Ordinary appointments act as effective substitutes for hard commitment devices
   - More than double testing rates
   - Effects concentrated among those with self-control problems

5. **Colonoscopy show rates:**
   - Scaled intervention improved show rates by 6 percentage points
   - Simultaneously reduced staff workload

Additional context:
- $49M total CHIBE grant activity in FY2025
- Penn Medicine Healthy Heart trial: 2,000 patients in West/Southwest Philadelphia and Lancaster County (2024-2025) testing behavioral nudges for blood pressure and cholesterol management from home
- Penn Medicine now funding scaled implementation of automated pharmacy referral program that increased statin prescribing

## Agent Notes
**Triage:** [CLAIM] — Default effects in EHR systems are the highest-leverage behavioral economics intervention in healthcare: minimal cost, large effect sizes, and they REDUCE rather than widen health disparities
**Why this matters:** Default effects are the strongest evidence for behavioral economics in health because they work through the SYSTEM (EHR configuration) not through the PATIENT (motivation, education). This means they can scale without per-patient cost — configure the EHR once, change behavior for every patient. And the disparity-reducing effect is remarkable: the default helps the least-advantaged patients most.
**What surprised me:** The disparity reduction. Most health interventions that work for the general population work LESS well for disadvantaged populations. Default effects work BETTER for disadvantaged populations because they remove the cognitive/administrative burden that disproportionately affects vulnerable patients.
**KB connections:** [[medical care explains only 10-20 percent of health outcomes...]], [[SDOH interventions show strong ROI but adoption stalls...]], [[healthcare is a complex adaptive system requiring simple enabling rules...]]
**Extraction hints:** Claim candidates: (1) "EHR default effects are the highest-leverage behavioral health intervention because they scale at near-zero marginal cost, produce large effect sizes (71% to 92%), and reduce rather than widen health disparities"; (2) "Behavioral economics interventions in healthcare work best when they modify the SYSTEM environment (defaults, prompts, architecture) rather than the PATIENT behavior (education, motivation, adherence)"

## Curator Notes
PRIMARY CONNECTION: healthcare is a complex adaptive system requiring simple enabling rules not complicated management because standardized processes erode the clinical autonomy needed for value creation
WHY ARCHIVED: Default effects are the "simple enabling rules" the complex adaptive system claim describes. The CHIBE evidence makes this concrete: change the EHR default → change prescribing behavior → reduce disparities. This is the behavioral economics bridge between the KB's structural claims and operational interventions.


## Key Facts
- CHIBE had $49M in total grant activity in FY2025
- Penn Medicine Healthy Heart trial enrolled 2,000 patients in West/Southwest Philadelphia and Lancaster County (2024-2025)
- Opioid prescribing guidelines adherence increased from 57.2% to 71.8% with peer comparison + patient-reported outcomes feedback
- Game-based physical activity intervention increased step counts by 1,700 steps/day (equivalent to 70+ miles over intervention period)
- Penn Medicine is now funding scaled implementation of automated pharmacy referral program that increased statin prescribing
