Feasibility of a call-in centre to deliver colorectal cancer screening in primary care.

Objective: To evaluate the feasibility of a call-in centre to deliver colorectal cancer (CRC) screening in primary care through self-administered fecal occult blood testing (FOBT).

Design: Four-month intervention study (September 2010 to January 2011) with randomly selected follow-up interviews.

Setting: The family medicine clinics of 3 hospitals in Montreal, Que.

Participants: Letters from doctors invited their patients to contact the call-in centre (N = 761). Eligible patients agreeing to FOBT were sent testing kits that could be returned by mail (N = 100). Randomly selected patients (N = 36) were interviewed to explore the reasons why they did not contact the call-in centre, or why they did or did not adhere to FOBT.

Main Outcome Measures: Feasibility was assessed by the proportions of patients who contacted the call-in centre, who were eligible for FOBT, and who adhered to FOBT; and by the time between invitation mail-out and contact with the call-in centre, initial telephone contact and receipt of the signed consent form, and FOBT kit mail-out and receipt of the kit by the laboratory. Hierarchical logistic regression evaluated the effect of patient characteristics on feasibility indicators, adjusting for clustering by physician and centre.

Results: Of 761 patients (61.6% female, mean age 61.0 years), 250 (32.9%) contacted the call-in centre, of whom 100 (40.0%) were eligible for and consented to FOBT; 62 (62.0%) of these patients adhered to FOBT. Median (interquartile range) time from invitation mail-out to call-in centre contact was 21 (7 to 29) days, from initial telephone contact to receipt of the signed consent form was 24 (10 to 38) days, and from FOBT kit mail-out to receipt at the laboratory was 23 (18 to 32) days. With the exception of previous cancer diagnosis, patient characteristics were not associated with feasibility indicators. Of the 115 (46.0%) patients determined to be ineligible for FOBT screening, 111 (96.5%) were up to date with or already scheduled for screening.

Conclusion: Feasibility of the call-in centre was demonstrated. Targeting screening-eligible individuals or coupling a call-in service with another evidence-based CRC screening improvement strategy might further improve uptake of fecal testing.