Primary care colorectal cancer screening correlates with breast cancer screening

In a retrospective cohort study, Dr. Jennifer Weiss et al. examined 90 primary care providers (PCPs) and over 33,000 patients eligible for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening to determine whether PCP colorectal cancer screening practices correlate with other preventive and chronic care needs. The investigators looked at CRC screening rates in comparison to five other PCP quality metrics—breast cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, HgbA1c and LDL testing, and blood pressure control—and found that PCP CRC screening rates have a strong correlation with breast cancer screening rates and a weak correlation with the other metrics. These results indicate that efforts to increase PCPs’ CRC screening rates could be bundled with breast cancer screening improvement interventions to increase their impac