Background: Racial/ethnic minority women are less likely to access high quality breast cancer screening and diagnosis, leading to higher rates of late-stage diagnoses. Higher rates of late-stage diagnoses are a major cause of higher breast cancer death rates in minority women. As a result, improving access to high quality breast imaging services can substantially reduce breast cancer mortality disparities. Breast imaging radiologists play a central role in the early detection of breast cancer through screening and diagnostic imaging.
Through quality improvement initiatives identifying and addressing access barriers over the past decade, Equal Hope (formerly the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force) and their project Equal Care significantly reduced Chicago’s pronounced breast cancer racial mortality disparities. They developed a statewide mammography quality program with 174 participating facilities. The integration of electronic medical records systems in the workflows of breast imaging practices highlights an opportunity to develop a quality improvement framework based on the Equal Hope model to provide breast imaging practices with regular, feedback on metrics related to radiologist quality and process quality/timeliness. These systems can guide and assess clinical practice interventions to improve access to quality services.
This educational exhibit will review the key elements required to create and sustain a quality improvement infrastructure to address breast cancer disparities, based on the experience of Equal Hope and the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality.
Learning Objectives: Upon completion of this exhibit attendees will be able to: o Summarize major drivers of breast cancer mortality disparities in the United States as they relate to breast imaging. o Review existing MQSA requirements for data collection o Assess readiness of breast imaging practices to collect and measure delays that can negatively affect outcomes o Describe potential solutions that breast imaging practices can implement to reduce disparities
Abstract Content/Results: o Literature review on the effects of imaging quality on breast cancer mortality disparities o Review existing MQSA requirements for data collection o Pictorial review of the Chicago Breast Cancer Quality Consortium readiness tool to instruct users on how to collect required practice level data elements o Case based review of interventions to reduce barriers to screening and diagnostic imaging
Conclusion: Breast imaging practices can play a central role in addressing barriers that racial and ethnic minority women face accessing high quality breast imaging. This educational exhibit will provide attendees with the tools and knowledge to develop and sustain this infrastructure.
