Improving risk assessment in family medicine through the family history

The family history is used as a screening tool to identify persons who may be at risk for a heritable disorder. Primary care providers sometimes do not thoroughly gather and document the family history. This pilot study was undertaken to determine whether having a genetic counselor on site at our family medicine clinic 2 days a week for 3 months would improve the quality of the family history field in patient records. We compared 7 elements in the family history field for patients seen before and after the genetic counselor was on site. Documentation of 1 of the 7 elements (major disease) improved significantly after the intervention period (P = .02). Changing provider behavior with regard to gathering and documenting family history of major disease may be facilitated by tools to help collect the family history and by using the increasing number of available genetic tests.