Abstract
Objectives
To determine the proportion of 50–75-year-old patients who visit a primary care physician’s (PCP) office and were tested for colorectal cancer (CRC) by either colonoscopy within 10 years or fecal occult blood testing (FOBT) within 2 years. To describe the variation in care between PCPs and factors associated with these proportions.
Methods
Cross-sectional data collected between April and December 2017. Participants: PCPs reporting for the Swiss Sentinel Surveillance Network. Each PCP collected demographic data and CRC testing status from 40 consecutive patients. Measurements: proportions of patients up to date with CRC screening and method used (colonoscopy/FOBT/Other); variation in the outcome measures between PCPs; association of physician-level factors with main outcomes.
Results
91/129 PCPs collected data from 3451 patients; 45% had been tested for CRC within recommended intervals (41% colonoscopy, 4% FOBT). The proportions of patients tested and testing with colonoscopy versus FOBT varied widely between PCPs. Language region was associated with PCPs’ rate of FOBT prescription.
Conclusions
Less than half of patients who visited PCPs in Switzerland were tested for CRC within recommended intervals. PCPs varied widely in their testing practices.
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Funding
This work was supported by the funds from the Swiss National Scientific Foundations National Research Plan 74 (NFP74. 407440_167519). The funder played no role in the design or conduct of the study, in the collection, management, analysis, or interpretation of data, or in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.
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None of the authors identified a conflict of interest for this manuscript.
Ethical approval
The ethics committee of the canton of Bern waived ethical approval for the study because of the double irreversible patient-data anonymization process (the FOPH cannot identify the patients, and investigators cannot identify the PCPs), so our study fell outside of the scope of the Swiss Human Research Act (REQ-2017-00,280).
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Major Revisions: 17 September 2018.
Minor Revisions: 24 January 2019.
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Braun, A.L., Prati, E., Martin, Y. et al. Variation in colorectal cancer testing between primary care physicians: a cross-sectional study in Switzerland. Int J Public Health 64, 1075–1083 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-019-01259-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-019-01259-4