Personalized cancer screening: helping primary care rise to the challenge

With their longitudinal patient relationships, primary care physicians and their care teams are uniquely situated to promote preventive medicine, including cancer screening. A confluence of forces is driving the demand for the personalization of cancer screening recommendations. Recommendations are increasingly based on individual patient preferences, medical history, genetic and environmental risk factors, and level of interaction with the healthcare system. Current examples include choices between colonoscopy, fecal testing, and emerging tests for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening; the use of genetic information and availability of home self-testing in cervical cancer screening; the integration of multiple risk factors and patient preferences to decide the intensity and length of breast cancer screening; and the issues of smoking cessation and competing priorities when deciding whether or not to pursue lung cancer screening. These changes will inevitably increase the burden on primary care of providing high-quality cancer screening to their patients. To address, primary care physicians need access to continuously updated evidence reviews including prioritization of strongly supported recommendations, training in shared decision-making and tools for preference diagnosis, and an electronic health record (EHR) and reimbursement model that allow for population health management and team-based care. Only by reinforcing cancer screening in primary care can we ensure that personalized cancer screening is accessible and evidence-based.