Pilot project offers insights for identifying patients at risk for hereditary cancer

As the WVU Cancer Institute continues to grow throughout the state, cross-collaboration and teamwork help set us up for success.

Christen Jordan, PA-C, MPAS, DMSc, director of Advanced Practice Professionals (APP) at the WVU Cancer Institute, and Amanda Moran, PA-C, APP, in the School of Medicine Department of Surgery, partnered with our Princeton team to implement a 12-week quality improvement pilot project. The goal was to develop a more effective process for identifying patients whose cancers may have an underlying hereditary cause.

Using an electronic health record Best Practice Advisory (BPA) and targeted provider education, germline testing rates increased from 30% before the intervention to 80% during the pilot. The BPA successfully identified eligible patients and prompted timely provider action, with a median time to testing order of zero days.

The pilot included only a small number of patients during the short duration, but the results demonstrate the potential for clinical decision-support tools to meaningfully improve the recognition and testing of patients at risk for hereditary cancer. The project also identified opportunities to further refine and optimize our electronic screening process as we work toward a more consistent, system-wide approach to identifying eligible patients.