Putting healthcare dollars into the 'right' preventio...( accine to everyone over 50 years of age...),Health

In the study of colorectal cancer screening, the authors find even more years of life would be saved and deaths prevented, but that only 50% of the population actually takes advantage of the service. They write, "Colorectal cancer screening continues to be a high-impact, cost-effective service utilized by fewer than half of the group aged 50 and older. It remains an important missed opportunity for improving health at a reasonable cost. Ten thousand additional deaths would be prevented each year if screening were offered to the entire target population, and an additional 12,000 would be prevented if all individuals accepted screening."

In the last of the five articles, Leif I. Solberg, MD and coworkers look at the effectiveness of counseling smokers to quit. Noting that over 18% of all deaths in the United States in 2000 were due to smoking-related disease, they show that even a limited intervention by health care providers would be cost-effective and result in an estimated 2.5 million years of life saved. Dr. Solberg writes, "Even if there is need for caution in taking these estimates literally, or if there is disagreement on the appropriateness of including cost savings from prevented smoking-attributable illness, there is no conceivable scenario in which smoking-cessation assistance that is consistently delivered in clinical practice settings would not be one of the most important preventive services. The challenge for this service is different--it is to find ways to ensure that it is delivered at rates and in ways that achieve the extraordinary potential benefits."

Addressing that challenge, C. Tracy Orleans, PhD, and colleagues describe the health systems changes and continued leadership required to support primary care providers in delivering brief primary care quit smoking advice and intervention (counseling and medication) routine
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16-May-2006