Estimating Cancer Screening Indicators in the Primary Care Setting

The software "Profile: A Cancer Risk Profile of Your Patient Practice" was used to estimate cancer screening activities in a primary care practice. "Profile" is a public health tool that does not track the screening histories of individual patients, but rather, using a sampling strategy, provides estimates for the entire practice of the age and sex specific number of screening eligible patients, the number screened, and the number that should have been screened, based on National Cancer Institute/American Cancer Society (NCI/A CS) guidelines. This report describes "Profile," and the results it generated from a sample of medical records. Primary care providers who seek to integrate primary and secondary cancer prevention activities into their routine practices will find it useful to have an objective estimate of their current level of such activities.