Challenge

Clinicians at a community health system in Wisconsin were challenged with attracting residents to their free monthly breast cancer screenings. With only a handful of women participating in each session, they realized a shift in the approach was needed to reach more women in a different way.

Solution

In 2009 the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force published new recommendations suggesting women should start mammography screening at age 50 instead of age 40 which caused some confusion among patients. Because of Medicom Health’s proactive approach to updating the underlying methodology in HRAs, this health system jumped at the chance to use this tool.

A genetic counselor added, “What most people missed from that report is those recommendations are only for low-risk patients. A woman still needs to know her risk to understand if she can wait until age 50 or if she needs mammograms sooner.”

Success

In just one month, the health system captured 856 unique user completions with an astounding 53% providing their contact information and accessing their personalized risk report. Of those, 61 users were identified as high risk which helped meet the Breast Cancer team’s mission of the identifying patients and encouraging them to begin screening and intervention earlier.

Physician recommendations to those patients might include 3D-mammography, breast MRI screening or chemoprevention, such as Tamoxifen therapy.

Additionally, of Medicom Health’s 100+ other clients currently using the Breast Cancer HRA, the health system quickly became the year-to-date number-two top performer in user completions.