Why? Because the emergency department is one of the few healthcare settings where people from traditionally underserved groups present for care, wrote a team led by Dr. Randy Miles of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
"Limited access to a regular source of primary care, a hallmark of patients visiting the ED for nonemergent issues, has also been shown to represent one of the strongest predictors of nonadherence to cancer screening," the team noted. "Thus, patient visits to the ED may represent an opportunity to engage hard-to-reach patient groups about cancer screening."
More than 600,000 breast, colorectal, and lung cancers are diagnosed each year, and although screening reduces the disease burden of these cancers, people of color and those with less financial resources often encounter barriers to screening, Miles and colleagues wrote. The team investigated whether the emergency department could mitigate these barriers by offering an opportunity for screening.