Team Science Principles Enhance Cancer Care Delivery Quality Improvement: Interdisciplinary Implementation of Breast...

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Implementation Science
• Team Science

Background:

• National guidelines recommend shared decision making (SDM) for mammography screening in women aged 40-49.
• Implementing SDM faces challenges in primary care settings.
• Innovations in quality improvement (QI) and team science (TS) can address these challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To improve the effectiveness, patient-centeredness, and efficiency of SDM for breast cancer screening in primary care.
• To develop and implement a SDM tool using QI and TS principles.

Main Methods:

• An interdisciplinary team collaborated over six years, employing two iterative plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles.
• A SDM tool, the Breast Cancer Risk Estimator, was developed and revised based on patient and physician feedback and tool performance analysis.
• Team science activities and their importance at different project stages were assessed.

Main Results:

• The Breast Cancer Risk Estimator was developed and found valuable by 87% of surveyed patients.
• Tool utilization increased from 2,000 sessions in 2017 to 4,097 in 2019.
• Early-stage breast cancer diagnoses were maintained during the implementation period.

Conclusions:

• Combining QI and TS principles effectively supports complex, interdisciplinary efforts to improve cancer care delivery.
• The implementation of a breast cancer screening SDM tool exemplifies the successful integration of these principles.