best practices handbook for health plans

“Thank you! This is exactly the type of information health plans need to pass to one another to improve partnership/collaboration, as the consumer will benefit at the end.”

“I really enjoyed that each of the health plans featured in the toolkit highlights a different intervention or opportunity. That gives our partners many approaches to choose from.”

Colorectal Cancer Screening Best Practices Handbook for Health Plans

Health plans have an essential role to play in the effort to screen more Americans for colorectal cancer, particularly given that seven out of 10 people who are unscreened are covered by insurance.

Colorectal Cancer Screening Best Practices Handbook for Health Plans, provides a first-of-its-kind compilation of best practices, case studies, templates and tools, that will kick start or infuse health plans’ efforts to save more lives and prevent more cancers.

To develop the handbook, the NCCRT convened an advisory group of health plan experts and interviewed high-performing health plans to understand what works and what doesn’t when it comes to increasing screening among members. Thank you to the many individuals and organizations who contributed their time and expertise to developing this much requested resource.

In the future, we hope to update this handbook with more case studies from high-performing health plans. If you have a story to share about how your health plan has worked to raise colorectal cancer screening rates, please email nccrt@cancer.org.

NCCRT’s issue brief, The Importance of Waiving Cost-sharing for Follow-up Colonoscopies, provides additional information on the colonoscopy copay issue.

View the March 28, 2017 webinar introducing the Handbook for a guided tour of the best practices, case studies, and templates and tools found within the handbook, and hear from one of the profiled health plans.

Colorectal Cancer Screening Best Practices Handbook For Health Plans

Colorectal Cancer Screening Best Practices Handbook for Health Plans – March 28, 2017

This webinar introduced the new NCCRT Colorectal Cancer Screening Best Practices Handbook for Health Plans. The purpose of this handbook is to provide health plans with advice on the design and delivery of effective colorectal cancer screening programs. The webinar provided participants with a guided tour of the best practices, case studies, and templates and tools found within the handbook, including a deeper dive into the exemplary practices for one of the profiled health plans.

Speakers:

  • Tamara O’Shaughnessy, QNA Group
  • Anshul Dixit, MD, MPH, MBA, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield

“This was one of the best colorectal cancer presentations, and it also provided information we can readily utilize with our current health plans in support of the 80% by 2018 initiative.”

New Hampshire Colorectal Cancer Screening Program Patient Navigation Model Replication Manual

The New Hampshire Colorectal Cancer Screening Program (NHCRCSP) patient navigation model has been highly effective in increasing the completion and quality of colonoscopy screening and surveillance among statewide underserved groups. Patients in this program, all of whom were navigated, were 11 times more likely to complete colonoscopy than non-navigated patients in a comparison group. Given this success, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the NHCRCSP worked together to develop a manual to help others replicate the model. The manual includes step-by-step instructions for implementing a screening navigation program, including a detailed navigation protocol, guidance on data collection, navigator training, and sample templates and tools.

Intended Audiences: Any organization that conducts colorectal cancer screening or administers a colonoscopy program may benefit from implementing this intervention. Organizations could include health systems, endoscopy centers, primary care practices (including Federally Qualified Health Centers), universities, state or local health departments, and grantee programs. This manual also may be useful for health care providers, pharmacy staff, and other community partners to clarify their roles in the intervention and how it benefits their patients.

Congratulations to former NCCRT Steering Committee member Dr. Lynn Butterly and to all the others who helped create this resource.

Evaluation: A rigorous evaluation was conducted, including a comparison of NHCRCSP-navigated patients to a similar group of non-navigated patients. Learn more on page 8 and in Appendix D. Evaluation results were also published in the journal Cancer.

Permissions: Made publicly available online through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Publication date: October 2016

Post date: September 18, 2017

Contact: Send comments, questions, and suggestions to NHPNManual@cdc.gov or NHCRCSP@hitchcock.org.

What Can Gastroenterologists & Endoscopists Do To Advance 80% By 2018?

Learn how gastroenterologists and endoscopists can be part of the national effort to make sure 80% of adults ages 50 and older are regularly screened for colorectal cancer by 2018.

Review the supplement to this brief, Identifying High Risk Patients and Families in Your Practice, for guidance on steps you can take to ensure your patients and their families receive timely and appropriate screening.

EHR Best Practice Workflow and Documentation Guide to Support Colorectal Cancer Screening Improvement with eClinicalWorks

The NCCRT commissioned the Health Center Network of New York (HCNNY) to develop EHR Best Practice Workflow and Documentation Guide to Support Colorectal Cancer Screening Improvement with eClinicalWorks. Please note that this tool is an advanced tool designed to inform those who work directly with electronic health records (EHRs). The overall goal of the project was to identify and document specific best practice workflows that support appropriate CRC screening and follow up and proper utilization of family history data within the eClinicalWorks EHR system (eCW). The guide is also intended to further enable FQHCs to employ existing CRC screening improvement tools to ultimately yield improved patient health outcomes. HCNNY will continue to enhance the guide as further information and/or product capabilities related to CRC screening become known. HCNNY and its participating FQHCs learned a great deal throughout this project and while the challenges of ensuring timely CRC screening for all patients are far from resolved, the detailed recommendations developed provide a roadmap for documentation that will assist health centers in building the necessary foundation for more reliable, actionable information to support their efforts to improve CRC screening rates. We are thankful for the support and collaboration from the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD) in developing this tool.

Watch the May 5, 2016 webinar introducing this new resource to learn more.

What Can Insurers Do To Advance 80% By 2018?

Learn how health insurers can be part of the national effort to make sure 80% of adults ages 50 and older are regularly screened for colorectal cancer by 2018.

What Can Hospitals Do To Advance 80% By 2018?

Learn how hospitals and health systems can be part of the national effort to make sure 80% of adults ages 50 and older are regularly screened for colorectal cancer by 2018.

Steps For Increasing Colorectal Cancer Screening Rates: A Manual For Community Health Centers

Steps for Increasing Colorectal Cancer Screening Rates: A Manual for Community Health Centers – September 11, 2014

This webinar introduced the new resource, Steps for Increasing Colorectal Cancer Screening Rates: A Manual for Community Health Centers.

Speakers:

  • Richard Wender, MD, American Cancer Society
  • Mary Doroshenk, MA, NCCRT
  • Maria Syl D. del la Cruz, MD, Thomas Jefferson University
CHC manual

Note: The NCCRT released a 2022 update to the Steps Guide in September 2022. The 2014 version is available for historical reference only. View the 2022 Steps Guide

Steps for Increasing Colorectal Cancer Screening Rates: A Manual for Community Health Centers

The NCCRT released a 2022 update to the Steps Guide in September 2022. 

This manual provides step-by-step instructions to help community health centers implement processes that will reduce physician workload and increase colorectal cancer screening. Important topics, such as conducting baseline screening rates, assessing capacity and preparing your team are covered. The goal of this manual is to offer practical advice for implementing expert-endorsed recommendations one step at a time.

The manual is organized into three primary sections: 1) An Introduction that provides information on the importance of colorectal cancer screening; 2) Steps to Increase Cancer Screening Rates, which maps out a plan for improving your screening rates and gives step by step instructions for doing so; and 3) The Appendices, which provides field-tested tools, templates, and resources to get you started.

We suggest that you use the manual in segments, focusing on the three or four pages of information you need at a time, and make good use of the appendices, which have several templates, tools, and resources to save you time.

If you use the live links throughout the manual, you can get back to where you were by pressing “Alt+Left Arrow” on a PC or “Command+Left Arrow” on a Mac.

View the September 11, 2014 webinar introducing the new manual.

The manual serves as a supplement to the existing How to Increase Colorectal Cancer Screening Rates in Practice: A Primary Care Clinician’s Evidenced based Toolbox and Guide.

 

Improving Northern Plains American Indian Colorectal Cancer Screening (INPACS) Report

The American Indian Cancer Foundation’s Improving Northern Plains American Indian Colorectal Cancer Screening (INPACS) project recruited 54 Indian Health Services (IHS), tribal health, and urban health clinics within MN, WI, ND, SD, NE, MT, and WY to better understand successes and challenges for colorectal cancer screening and to collaboratively develop strategies to improve cancer screening rates.

About 96,000 American Indians between ages 50 and 74 reside in the Northern Plains, where the incidence of colorectal cancer is 53% higher for American Indians compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Although rates are improving, less than half of Northern Plain American Indians ages 50 years and older are up to date with colorectal cancer screening.

Data for this report was collected by INPACS staff during visits to each participating site. Multiple components of the project comprehensively assessed quality assurance measures at both the provider-level and the systems-level such as colorectal cancer policies and clinic systems for provider and patient reminders.

A clear, overarching finding of this project is that system-level strategies are needed to impact colorectal cancer screening rates in clinics across Indian Country. A provider who recommends screening is the most influential factor in patients completing colorectal cancer screening. The report also discusses clinic policies on screening, clinic reminder systems, communication systems, highlights from provider discussions, and lessons learned from the INPACS project.

Evaluation: The INPACS project used surveys and one-on-one discussions to assess clinic colorectal cancer screening practices. The project focused on evaluating the use of evidence-based practices, such as patient and provider reminders, described in in NCCRT’s “How to Increase Colorectal Cancer Screening Rates in Practice: A Primary Care Clinician’s Evidence-Based Toolbox & Guide.”

Permissions: Made publicly available online through the American Indian Cancer Foundation.

Publication date: May 2013

Post date: October 2, 2017

Contact: Send comments, questions, and suggestions to Anne Walaszek at awalaszek@aicaf.org or info@aicaf.org.