Sharing Stories Improves Cancer Screening Rates
- Identifying members who are eligible for colorectal screening
- Developing scripting to personalize the importance of the screening
- Creating a process for follow up with members
What can your team do to humanize your approach in talking to patients about cancer screenings?
When this Northwest team decided to work on improving colorectal screening rates, it developed an approach that included a two-pronged outreach system and a plan for ensuring team members were delivering a consistent message. By using specialized scripting, team members personalized the importance of the test. They told the story of how physicians in the clinic had tested positive—but because the disease was detected early, they got treatment in time and are doing well. In addition, the team identified its eligible patients between the ages of 50 and 75 and created a workflow to follow up with them. The combination of methods worked even better than hoped: The team shot past its target by nearly 7 percentage points.
Adding a personal story about the importance of returning a FIT kit helped this team in the Northwest shoot past its goal for improving the rate of return for the cancer-screening test.
Sharing personal stories about catching cancer early motivates patients to return their FIT kits.
of eligible patients who completed the annual colorectal cancer screening test, up from 72 percent two years earlier