Outreach for Patients With Uncompleted Colorectal Cancer Screening Orders (UPQUAL)

Northwestern University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Prevention & Control; Colorectal Cancer Screening

Treatments: Behavioral: Educational outreach

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT00793455

1R18HS017163-01

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether patient outreach is effective at increasing compliance with preventive screenings ordered by their physician. We hypothesize that educational outreach may increase completion rates.

Full description

We designed an intervention to focus on patients who have received and accepted a referral for colonoscopy, yet have exhibited some barriers to screening as demonstrated by a lack of screening completion. We conducted a randomized controlled trial to assess the effects of a multicomponent intervention (patient reminder, print and multimedia materials) on colorectal screening completion among this target population.

Enrollment: 628 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Patient's physician has ordered a preventive screening test
• Patient has not completed this test in 3 months
• Patient of Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation General Internal Medicine Clinic.

Exclusion criteria

• Patient has been given a more recent order for the same screening test.
• Patient has significant life stress as noted in the Electronic Health Record (EHR)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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628 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention Group

Experimental group

Description:

Received Educational Outreach

Treatment:

Behavioral: Educational outreach

Usual Care Control Group

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants in this arm will receive normal care until outcome assessment is performed at 6 months following the placement of the order for the preventive service. They will be sent a letter reminding them to obtain the ordered preventive service test.