220103 Understanding the delivery of cancer screening through the lens of Electronic Medical Records

Monday, November 8, 2010

Mei-Po Yip, PhD , Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Lin Li, MPH , Biostatistics and Biomathematics, Public Health Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA
Genji S. Terasaki, MD , Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Luong An , International Community Health Services, Seattle, WA
Yutaka Yasui, PhD , Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Sherry X. Feng , University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Shin-Ping Tu, MD MPH , Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Introduction: One potential benefit of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) is to promote the delivery of quality medical care. Yet few studies have demonstrated how EMR can facilitate decision-makers to formulate more effective and targeted strategies. Methods: Working with the data services unit at a community health center (CHC), our research team devoted 12 months to design and implement a data extraction protocol that integrated USPSTF guidelines to better understand the patient screening behaviors of the Vietnamese patients, who has the lowest CRC screening rate compared with other patient populations at the clinic. Data was extracted from the ICHS Enterprise Practice Management and EMR. Effects of co-morbidity and continuity of care were also examined. Results: Patients who had public health insurance and a higher continuity of care index were more likely to adhere to CRC screening. Primary care provider's language concordance also had an interaction effect on CRC screening adherence. Conclusions: EMR data extraction provided an efficient and standard measure on how well the patient, the provider, and the organization performed. Our findings underscore the impact of continuity of care and language matched services on CRC screening. This study illustrates the significant contribution EMR data could provide to enhance clinic operations, decision making, and performance.

Learning Areas:
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice

Learning Objectives:
To describe the use of EMR to provide quality data to assess delivery of colorectal cancer screening in a community health center

Keywords: Cancer Prevention, Health Information

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the co-investigator of this project.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.