Colorectal Cancer Screening Preventive Reminder Ordering AssistanCe Via Texting for Improved Visit Encounters
For patients and families
In plain language
An automatic summary of structured registry data. It is an orientation aid, not a substitute for the official protocol or a physician assessment.
- What is being studied
- The protocol lists: Post-visit patient messaging.
- Who it may be relevant to
- Registry conditions: Behavior, Health. Basic parameters: from 18 years · All.
- What needs checking
- Age, condition and sex are only basic indicators. Prior treatment, laboratory values and other mandatory requirements appear in the eligibility criteria below.
- Where it takes place
- United States
- Next step
- Save the trial, show it to the treating physician, and confirm current recruitment with the study center. Costs, documents and travel →
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Overview
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. A substantial portion of the United States population remains overdue for screening, despite availability and insurance coverage of preventive health services. Barriers for completion and remaining up to date with screening include patients not remaining actively engaged with their care team, time constraints during office visits, and operational strain. This project aims to implement and evaluate a primary care visit-based outreach program that improves patient follow through on completion of overdue CRC screening. This will be a 6 month, stepped-wedge, pragmatic trial conducted at Penn Medicine.
Detailed description
A substantial portion of the United States population remains overdue for preventive care screenings, despite availability of health services. This gap in care persists due to both patient and clinician facing barriers. Patients may not always remain actively engaged with their care team, while clinicians are impacted by time constraints and the complexity of managing multiple care tasks during visits. One population health strategy to address these barriers is visit-based nudges, which are anchored around office visits and use methods such as post-visit texting to patients. One study aimed at improving colorectal cancer screening rates uses visit-based outreach, in addition to direct outreach, to offer patients colonoscopy and fecal immunochemical tests (FIT), which are top tier tests for CRC screening. Another prior study, aimed at improving mammogram completion, utilized pended orders and post-visit texting to increase screening rates by 5 percentage points at six months for intervention patients. Both studies have highlighted the need to create a scalable program for a cohesive patient experience. Building upon our prior and current work and in collaboration with primary care, we propose to develop and evaluate an integrated visit-based preventive health program with nudges to patients using a stepped wedge design, with the goal of implementing this system across primary care practices. This trial will run concurrently with another trial, PROACTIVE (IRB #589571), evaluating pre-visit and post-visit nudges to clinicians and patients to increase screening completion for multiple care gaps identified as high priority by primary care. Because this trial only utilizes post-visit text messaging to the patient and no clinician nudge, it will be a distinct analysis and considered a separate trial.
Interventions
- Behavioral Post-visit patient messaging
All patients who complete their primary care visit and whose provider signed a colonoscopy or FIT order at their office visit will be sent post-visit text messages 7 and 14 days after visit completion, if they have not yet scheduled or completed their overdue CRC screening. The messages delivered at 7 and 14 days will remind patients that appointments for their colonoscopy are available for them and provide phone number(s) to call for scheduling, or the messages will remind patients to return th
Primary outcome measures
- Colonoscopy Completion (6 months) [Time frame: Within 6 months after first eligible primary care visit.]
Secondary outcome measures (3)
- Colonoscopy Completion (12 months) [Time frame: Within 12 months after the first eligible primary care visit.]
- FIT Completion (6 months) [Time frame: Within 6 months after the first eligible primary care visit.]
- FIT Completion (12 months) [Time frame: Within 12 months after the first eligible primary care visit.]
Eligibility criteria
Inclusion criteria
All patients must meet the following criteria to be eligible:
- Age 18 years or older
- A scheduled new or return (non-urgent/sick) primary care visit at one of the study practices
- Overdue for colorectal cancer screening by health maintenance
- Ordered for FIT or Colonoscopy at the eligible visit
Exclusion criteria
As this trial is integrated with routine clinical operations, there will be no exclusion criteria other than already having an eligible visit at some point during the trial duration with an order for FIT or Colonoscopy.
Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.
Healthy volunteers: No
Study design
- Allocation
- Randomized
- Model
- Sequential
- Masking
- Double blind
- Primary purpose
- Health services research
Study locations
United States · 1 center
- University of Pennsylvania Health System — Philadelphia
Identifiers
NCT: NCT07636174 · 26-6819