Using Connected Health to Increase Lung Cancer Screening

In 2013, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) provided a Grade "B" recommendation for annual lung cancer screening (LCS) for asymptomatic adults aged 55-80 who are or have been heavy smokers (≥30 pack-years of smoking and quit-date < 15 years ago), and are able to undergo surgery. In 2015, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued national coverage for LCS requiring that LCS counseling, which must include shared decision-making and tobacco cessation counseling, occur prior to LCS. CMS also provides reimbursement for LCS counseling to further support providers to engage in meaningful, collaborative conversations about LCS with patients. Despite widespread support, uptake and implementation of LCS across the United States has been low (estimated 3-5% screening-eligible population screened). Locally, since the onset of the Penn Medicine LCS Program in 2014, over 3,500 individual patients have received LCS; however, documentation and reimbursement of LCS counseling are limited.

Challenges of implementing LCS include substantial barriers to identifying screening-eligible patients, supporting high-quality decision-making, and remaining uncertainties regarding risks and benefits. For other types of cancer screening, insights from behavioral science have been applied to understand how cognitive biases and beliefs impact screening uptake. Yet for LCS, there is limited evidence on how these beliefs may affect screening behaviors in routine practice. Given the complexities of LCS, in which the benefits do not clearly outweigh the harms, understanding how these biases impact screening can help inform development of intervention strategies that both support informed decision-making and increase uptake among eligible patients. Leveraging an existing EMR-based data warehouse, this study will combine insights from behavioral economics and connected health strategies to pilot test connected health approaches including direct patient outreach and telemedicine visits to improve LCS counseling, and to explore individual-level moderators of LCS screening intention and uptake. The long-term goal is to decrease lung cancer burden by increasing utilization of LCS and providing clinicians and patients with effective strategies to deliver high-quality, patient-centered care. This study will also advance scientific understanding of the mechanisms that drive or hinder health behavior in the context of cancer prevention.