Population-based breast cancer screening in a primary care network

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Public Health
• Oncology

Background:

• Effective breast cancer screening is crucial for early detection and improved patient outcomes.
• Traditional reminder systems often have limitations in achieving high population-based screening rates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate a health information technology system's effectiveness in facilitating population-based breast cancer screening.
• To assess the impact of a management informatics system (MIS) on mammography completion rates.

Main Methods:

• A cohort study with a 2-year follow-up was conducted after a 1-year cluster randomized trial.
• The study involved 32,688 women aged 42-69 within a 12-practice primary care network.
• A management informatics system (MIS) was used to identify, outreach, monitor, and remind women overdue for mammograms.

Main Results:

• Among 9795 women overdue for screening, the intervention group (using MIS) showed significantly higher adjusted mammography completion rates (51.7% vs. 45.8%; P = .002) in the prevalent cohort after 3 years.
• In the incident cohort, adjusted completion rates were also higher in the intervention group after 2 years (53.8% vs. 48.7%; P = .052).
• The MIS facilitated identification of overdue women, provider connection, automated outreach, scheduling monitoring, and reminder calls.

Conclusions:

• Population-based informatics systems, like the MIS evaluated, can achieve sustained increases in mammography screening rates.
• These systems are more effective than traditional office-based visit reminders for enhancing screening adherence.