Impact of Primary Care Physician Interaction on Longitudinal Adherence to Screening Mammography Across Different Racial/Ethnic Groups

Regular contact with a primary care physician (PCP) is associated with increased participation in screening mammography. Older studies suggested that PCP interaction may have a smaller effect on screening mammography uptake among racial and ethnic minorities compared with whites, but there is limited contemporary evidence about the effect of PCP interaction on screening mammography uptake across different racial and ethnic groups. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association between PCP contact and longitudinal adherence with screening mammography guidelines over a 10-year period across different racial/ethnic groups.

This HIPAA-compliant and institutional review board-approved retrospective single-institution study included women between the ages of 50 and 64 years who underwent screening mammography in the calendar year of 2005. The primary outcome of interest was adherence to recommended screening mammography guidelines (yes or no) at each 2-year interval from their index screening mammographic examination in 2005 until 2015. Patients were defined as having a high level of PCP interaction if their PCPs were listed in the electronic medical record within the top three providers with whom the patients had the most visits during the study period. Generalized estimating equation models were used to estimate the effect of high PCP interaction on screening mammography adherence while adjusting for correlated observations and patient characteristics.

Patients in the high PCP interaction group had increased longitudinal adherence to recommended screening mammography (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 1.51; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.42-1.73; P < .001). This was observed in stratified analyses for all self-reported racial groups, including white (adjusted OR, 1.51; 95% CI, 1.36-1.68; P < .001), black (adjusted OR, 1.93; 95% CI, 1.31-2.86; P = .001), Hispanic (adjusted OR, 1.92; 95% CI, 1.27-2.87; P = .002), Asian (adjusted OR, 1.55; 95% CI, 1.01-2.39; P = .045), and other (adjusted OR, 2.18; 95% CI, 1.32-3.56; P = .002), with no evidence of effect modification by race/ethnicity (P = .342). Medicaid (adjusted OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.31-0.53) and self-pay or other (adjusted OR, 0.39; 95% CI, 0.27-0.56) insurance categories were associated with decreased longitudinal adherence to recommended screening mammography (P < .001 for both).

High levels of PCP interaction result in similar improvements in longitudinal screening mammography adherence for all racial/ethnic minority groups. Future efforts will require targeted outreach to assist Medicaid and uninsured patient populations overcome barriers to screening mammography adherence.