Improving smoking history documentation in the electronic health record for lung cancer risk assessment and screening in primary care: A case study

Elizabeth Peterson; Kathryn Harris; Farhood Farjah; Nkem Akinsoto; Leah M Marcotte

doi:10.1016/j.hjdsi.2021.100578

Improving smoking history documentation in the electronic health record for lung cancer risk assessment and screening in primary care: A case study

Healthc (Amst). 2021 Dec;9(4):100578. doi: 10.1016/j.hjdsi.2021.100578. Epub 2021 Aug 24.

Authors

Elizabeth Peterson¹, Kathryn Harris², Farhood Farjah³, Nkem Akinsoto⁴, Leah M Marcotte²

Affiliations

¹ UW Medicine Valley Medical Center, Renton, WA, USA. Electronic address: Elizabeth_Peterson@valleymed.org.
² Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA.
³ Department of Surgery, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA.
⁴ Primary Care and Population Health, UW Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA.

Abstract

Improving risk factor documentation in the electronic health record (EHR) is important in order to determine patient eligibility for lung cancer screening. System-level prioritization combined with a clinic-level initiative can improve risk factor documentation rates. Multi-faceted interventions that include training, process improvement, data management, and continuous performance feedback are effective and can be integrated into existing workflows.

Keywords: Health IT; Lung cancer screening; Smoking risk factors.

MeSH terms

Documentation
Early Detection of Cancer
Electronic Health Records*
Humans
Lung Neoplasms* / diagnosis
Primary Health Care
Risk Assessment
Smoking

Grants and funding

K12 HS026369/HS/AHRQ HHS/United States