[General practitioners’ preferences towards incentive measures linked with cancer screening]

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Services Research
• General Practice

Background:

• General practitioners (GPs) are crucial for cancer prevention and screening.
• Current GP involvement in cancer screening is low and inconsistent.
• Understanding GP motivations is key to improving screening rates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the factors influencing general practitioners' (GPs) participation in cancer screening.
• To identify optimal incentives for increasing GP involvement in breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening.

Main Methods:

• Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) methodology employed.
• 402 GPs in France participated.
• GPs evaluated 12 choice tasks assessing preferences for 5 screening attributes.

Main Results:

• GPs respond to both financial and non-financial incentives.
• Incentives include compensated training and improved patient information systems.
• Preferences differ by cancer type: financial incentives for colorectal, non-financial for breast/cervical screening.

Conclusions:

• Policymakers can utilize targeted incentives to boost GP-led cancer screening.
• Tailoring incentives to specific cancer screening contexts is effective.
• Findings inform strategies to enhance cancer screening delivery in primary care.