Improving Adherence to Hepatitis C Screening: A Pilot Project

Abstract

**Please note that the full text is embargoed** ABSTRACT: Purpose: The purpose of this project was to determine whether implementing a clinical prompt reminder in the electronic medical record (EMR) would improve provider's adherence to Hepatitis C Viral (HCV) screening per the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) guideline. Background: Nearly four million Americans are infected with HCV, but the majority are unaware of their status (CDC, 2012). HCV is a chronic progressive disease and is strongly associated with liver cancer and other HCV complications in untreated individuals (El-Serag, 2012). Although HCV can be cured, the lack of HCV screening makes the disease underdiagnosed and undertreated. Methodology: A pilot project was conducted using a one group pre and post- test design without a comparison group. Pre-intervention and post-intervention data was collected by retrospective chart review. The project was conducted in three phases. In phase one, a baseline assessment of the provider's compliance to the HCV screening guideline was conducted. In phase two, the HCV birth cohort alert was implemented into the EMR. Finally, phase three assessed whether the prompt made any difference in the provider's screening rate. Results: The findings showed statistically significant differences m the pre-intervention and post-intervention with a p= 0.008 ( 1 tailed). Conclusions: Implementing the HCV clinical prompt reminder to the EMR had a statistically and clinically significant effect on increasing health care providers (HCPs) adherence to the recommended screening guidelines.