Bridging the Gap: Portal Messages as a Tool to Improve Breast Cancer and Diabetes Screening Rates

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Preventive Medicine
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Electronic patient reminders are utilized by healthcare systems to promote preventive care.
• Innovative randomized testing can identify effective reminder design elements.
• Improving patient responsiveness to reminders is crucial for public health.

Purpose of the Study:

• To enhance patient response rates to electronic preventive care screening reminders.
• To identify specific design elements that improve patient engagement with health reminders.

Main Methods:

• Utilized an iterative electronic health record (EHR) reminder redesign process.
• Employed a behaviorally informed framework and randomized implementation for testing.
• Compared redesigned reminders against existing ones for retinal, hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), and mammography screenings.

Main Results:

• Redesigned mammography reminders significantly increased adherence (11.8% vs. 6.1%, p=0.04).
• No significant difference in adherence was observed for redesigned retinal or HbA1c reminders.
• Personalized vs. non-personalized mammography reminders showed similar scheduling adherence in Cycle #2.

Conclusions:

• Iterative, randomized testing of redesigned electronic reminders is feasible in complex healthcare settings.
• Brief electronic messages incorporating a direct scheduling link proved effective for mammography reminders.
• Further research may explore personalized elements for other screening types.