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Family Medicine And The Health Care System |
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (CBA, JWM)
Oklahoma Foundation for Medical Quality (ME, LH), Oklahoma City
Correspondence: Corresponding author: Cheryl B. Aspy, PhD, Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, 900 NE 10th Street, Oklahoma City, OK 73104 (E-mail: cheryl-aspy{at}ouhsc.edu)
| Abstract |
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Methods: A total of 16 practices participated; 8 were assigned to intervention and 8 to usual care. Pre- and post-audits of mammography rates were conducted. Intervention practices received feedback with benchmarking, academic detailing, and the assistance of a practice enhancement assistant to help with practice redesign over a 9-month period.
Results: The groups differed significantly for both the proportion of mammograms offered to eligible patients (P = .043) and for the proportion of patients with current mammograms (P < .015). For the control group, 38% of eligible women were offered a mammogram and 202 (35% of those eligible) actually did have documentation that a mammogram had been performed. Fifty-three percent of the eligible patients in the intervention group were offered a mammogram and 52% of those eligible (n = 332) did have documentation in the chart that the mammogram had been completed.
Conclusion: The results suggest that these interventions can improve mammography rates in a range of practice settings. These findings are consistent with other studies that have tested multicomponent interventions.
Mammography rates for Oklahoma women have lagged behind national rates. For example, in 1999 Oklahoma ranked 44th in the nation for women over 40 reporting ever having had a mammogram.10 For that same year, 68.1% of Oklahoma women over age 40 reported having a mammogram within the past 2 years compared with 72.8% nationally. This discrepancy between state and national rates widened and in 2006, Oklahoma women over age 40 who reported having a mammogram within the past 2 years was 67.7% compared with 76.5% of women nationally.11
Support for mammography screening in Oklahoma increased on May 10, 2004, when Governor Brad Henry signed a bill allocating $2.5 million for breast cancer and cervical screenings for low-income Oklahomans. This removed a potential barrier for women of low income. Acting on a separate mandate from the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services, the Oklahoma Foundation for Medical Quality launched a statewide campaign to raise the state's mammography rate in 2004 and provide education for Oklahoma women on the affordability of mammograms.
Reasons reported by women for not having a mammogram have included such things as uncertainty about effectiveness; confusing and contradicting recommendations (eg, every year versus every other year and age 50 and older vs age 40 and older); lack of financial incentives12,13; lack of time14; and, perhaps most importantly, the lack of a systematic approach to screening within primary care office settings.15
Strategies to improve mammography rates have been numerous but have generally included single strategies such as physician education, practice audit and feedback, reminders, and flow sheets,16–18 and results have been mixed. Although integrated systematic approaches have been tested and have shown improvement,19,20 interventions are more likely to approach the screening problem by focusing only on physician behavior consistent with the following outcomes described by Ruffin et al21: "... investigators are beating on a black box (physician behavior) with a variety of tools to modify the delivery of preventive services. The result is only marginal change or no change. Before we can intervene successfully in physician behavior, we need a far more basic understanding of physicians' practice behaviors."
One methodology showing promise in affecting physician performance is the "best practices research" method developed by Mold and Gregory.22 In this model, exemplars for the steps comprising a particular behavior under consideration are identified and confirmed through practice audits. Exemplar approaches to individual steps are then assembled into a unified strategy, evaluated, and disseminated. Results using this approach have been encouraging. By tapping into the wisdom of clinicians who have "solved" parts of the problem and combining their methods, an integrated, effective approach can usually be found.22–24
The purpose of this project was to apply the best practices research methodology, in combination with a multicomponent implementation intervention (audit with feedback and benchmarking, academic detailing, and practice facilitation), to the problem of breast cancer screening within community practices that are members of a practice-based research network, with the goal of improving mammography rates.
| Methodology |
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Physicians were randomly assigned to the intervention and usual care groups using an internet randomizer.25 The 8 physicians assigned to the intervention group received (1) audit results and a comparison with the network benchmark (benchmark data were obtained through chart audits from another project); (2) academic detailing of exemplar principles and information from the medical literature; (3) services of a practice facilitator for 9 months; and (4) information technology support if requested. Practices were free to choose (or not) from the identified exemplar strategies or to modify them as necessary to fit the practice constraints of their individual settings. The PEAs were trained in the exemplar methods and were skilled in quality improvement techniques. The "Plan, Do, Study, Act" rapid cycle quality improvement process was used to implement incremental changes and make adjustments as required.26 The PEAs spent at least 2 days per month at each practice and helped the practitioners design their interventions and facilitate the "Plan, Do, Study, Act" process. The role of the PEA was to provide information and feedback to guide the practice redesign activities. The remaining 8 practices comprised the usual care group and received no feedback or practice change facilitation.
| Data Collection |
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Eligible patients were women 50 years of age or older who had at least one visit to the practice in the 12 months before the study implementation and who did not have a diagnosis of breast cancer. A target sample size was 100 randomly selected charts per physician for each data collection period (or as many as were eligible in the case of physicians who did not practice full-time). For the audit after intervention, women who were 50 years of age or older who had seen the clinician during the last 6 months of the intervention period (or in the last 6 months of the 9-month period after the pre-audit for the usual care group) and who did not have a diagnosis of breast cancer were included. Lists of eligible patients were generated from billing records or electronic medical record systems and then systematically sampled to achieve the desired number of 100 charts. If review of the chart revealed that this patient belonged to another clinician, it was skipped and the next chart on the list was substituted. All eligible charts were abstracted if the available number was less than 100.
At the conclusion of the intervention, the PEAs summarized the methods used to improve mammography screening by each practice. In addition, the PEAs were asked to rate the practices' commitments to changing their office systems to improve delivery of preventive services. This information was used to provide more detail regarding the interventions that were implemented. Table 2 summarizes the exemplar methods used by each intervention practice.
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| Data Analysis |
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2 test, which produces an adjusted
2 with 1 degree of freedom that accounts for the design effect caused by clustering, as an additional confirmation. We also calculated the interclass correlation coefficient. Availability of data for race/ethnicity, marital status, and education varied widely by provider resulting in some missing data (68% of usual care group, 55% of the intervention group for race/ethnicity; 40% of the usual care group and 25% of the intervention group for marital status) such that reasonable comparisons could not be made. Therefore, these items were not included in the analyses. There were 28 missing values for insurance codes, and 70 "other" insurance types that included "none" or "unknown type" or "Indian Health Service." When comparing Medicaid and Medicare patients by intervention or usual care groups, there were 349 and 358 patients, respectively, in each group. For the analysis after the audit, insurance status was not a factor in mammography rates. | Protection of Human Subjects |
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| Results |
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2 analysis to account for clustering also revealed a significant difference between the 2 groups (xRS2 = 17.49; degree of freedom = 1; P < .0001). The intraclass correlation coefficient was .114 based on 8 clusters per group with an average size of 75.8. Only 2 of the usual care practices showed an improvement, whereas 3 had rates that dropped across the study period. Mammography documentation for the intervention group ranged from a low of 21% to a high of 75%; however, 6 of the 8 practices improved their mammography rates, 2 remained the same, and none declined. In all the practices that improved their rates, the physician was highly motivated (estimated by the PEA based on leadership and involvement in the intervention) to improve, and a system for screening and referral was put into place. That did not mean that the strategy required physician action. Most practices used strategies that empowered the medical assistant to check charts at the time a patient presented to the clinic and determine whether the patient was eligible for a mammogram, and if so to schedule it. One practice generated a list of women who did not have evidence of a current mammogram in the chart and sent each one a reminder that it was time to schedule their mammogram; this resulted in a 49% increase in their mammography rate. Another practice with a high rate of improvement used an information technology strategy that involved tracking all referrals and providing that information to the physician so that follow-up could be initiated when a referral appointment was not kept. This strategy resulted in a 56% increase.
| Discussion |
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It should be noted that the overall current mammography rates in both the intervention and usual care practices were lower than the reported overall state rate, which is based on telephone interviews with patients. One likely explanation is that women who receive gynecological care from a sub-specialist may also receive referrals from that specialist for mammography and the reports of results are returned to the referring physician rather than the family physician. Lack of documentation of this in the chart (even though possibly known to the physician) would be reflected by no offer of a referral and no current mammogram noted. Lack of documentation of referrals and patient refusals could also have contributed. It is likely that some patients selected for the chart audits were not continuity patients, in that they could qualify for the audit by age, sex, and having had only one visit during the relevant time period. The likelihood of a mammography referral in the case of a first visit prompted by an acute problem would be low. It is also possible that the time limit (eg, a qualifying visit could occur within days of the audit) precluded an opportunity for some patients to schedule and receive a mammogram.
Despite having access to the multicomponent translational intervention, 2 of the intervention practices did not improve their mammography rates. When practice characteristics including years in practice, age, type of practice, and patient characteristics (including age and insurance type) were compared, no significant differences were found between those who improved and those who did not. For one of the practices that did not change, the physician attributed the low rate of mammograms to the lack of initiative by the patients and felt that it was their responsibility to self-refer for mammography. Consistent with that attitude, only 21% of eligible patients in that practice were offered a mammogram. The other practice that did not improve, although an aggressive method was implemented, required the nurse to review each patient chart for current mammogram status and to signal the physician if a mammogram were needed. No change was observed in the overall rate at this practice, which was just under 60%. They also had an adherence to recommendation rate around 98% and the age of the patients did not differ from the overall mean, so it is not clear why the rate did not improve.
These practices were typical of many small practices where the office staffing consists of a receptionist, billing clerk, nursing or medical assistant, and a clinician. Of the 4 practices that improved the most (17 to 43 percentage points), 2 were in academic practices, one was in a group practice, and one was in solo practice. Given a desire to increase screening and referral for mammography, our study suggests that rates can be improved by selecting a process to identify those patients who need a mammogram and making a referral (or appointment for the mammogram) at that time. The consistency among successful improvers was the office-wide commitment to and participation in the process, once again reinforcing the power of a goal in outcome achievement.
The study is limited by the small number of practices and the possibility that those selected to participate may not be representative of other practices in the research network. In addition, given the awareness of the intervention sites that their performance would be observed by the PEA and analyzed, the Hawthorne effect may have contributed to the outcome. It is also possible that having only one person interview the exemplars resulted in the exclusion of a strategy from the best practices suggestions that might have been even more effective.
Despite these limitations, this study found that using a multicomponent translational intervention consisting of academic detailing, audit feedback with benchmarking, and practice facilitation resulted in significant improvement in mammography rates. Although baseline motivation to improve is a factor, it should be noted that each of the intervention components was designed to motivate the practices toward incremental system changes that would ultimately improve their rates of performance.
| Notes |
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Funding: The analyses upon which this publication is based were performed under Contract Number 500-02-OK-03, funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. The authors assume full responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the ideas presented. Publication number: 1D-040-Mamarticle-OK-0107.
Conflict of interest: none declared.
Received for publication March 1, 2007. Revision received October 9, 2007. Accepted for publication October 12, 2007.
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