CASE STUDY:
Bringing Early Detection Within Reach
How Campaign-Based Marketing, Powered by CancerIQ, Drove Patient Acquisition, Early Lung Cancer Detection at Nebraska Medicine
Nebraska Medicine’s lung cancer screening clinic aims to help patients get ahead of late-stage diagnoses. The program uses low-dose CT scans to detect cancer in the earliest stages, even before patients experience symptoms. Early detection is shown to reduce lung cancer mortality by up to 20%.
Nebraska Medicine partnered with CancerIQ to increase patient acquisition within its lung cancer screening clinic and ensure high-risk patients received the appropriate LDCT screening and downstream care. CancerIQ’s technology and services helped the clinic stratify population risk, engage potential at-risk patients in comprehensive cancer risk assessment, and ultimately, bring more high-risk patients into the lung cancer screening clinic — leading to early cancer detection and service line growth.
CancerIQ Reach drove a 270% monthly increase in new patients scheduled at Nebraska Medicine’s lung cancer screening clinic, which helped 4 patients detect cancer early in the first two months alone.
“CancerIQ made it easy to bring people in the door and engage them in personalized cancer care pathways. Now we can ensure high-risk patients are taking proactive steps to manage their health at Nebraska Medicine.”
— Rachael Schmidt, DNP, APRN, AOCNP, Program Director for Cancer Survivorship & Cancer Risk, Nebraska Medicine
HOW IT WORKS
Targeted outreach increases patient acquisition
In Nebraska, lung cancer is common — and deadly. In 2023 alone, Nebraska had an estimated 1,340 new lung cancer diagnoses and 630 lung cancer deaths. Lung cancer survival is relatively low because almost half of all lung cancers are diagnosed in advanced stages, when disease is more difficult to treat.
Engaging high-risk individuals in early lung cancer screening, even before symptoms appear, is vital to improving these statistics.
"Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in Nebraska, but the screening rate for at-risk patients is just 3.7% due to the complexity of screening guidelines and the difficulty of obtaining up-to-date patient history," said Rachael Schmidt, Program Director for Cancer Survivorship & Cancer Risk, Nebraska Medicine.
The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) currently recommends low-dose CT screening for individuals 50-80 years old who have a cumulative 20 pack-year history and a history of smoking within the past 15 years. (One pack year is the equivalent of smoking one pack of cigarettes per day for a year.) Capturing cumulative pack-year information can be difficult due to limitations in EHR data fields, changes in smoking behavior over time, and perceived stigma around smoking.
“CancerIQ helped us solve our ‘junk data in, junk data out’ EHR problem and get the information necessary to improve care.”
— Rachael Schmidt, DNP, APRN, AOCNP, Program Director for Cancer Survivorship & Cancer Risk, Nebraska Medicine
“Feeding junk data into the EHR only produces junk results,” said Schmidt. “Knowing these limitations and the sheer volume of information our primary care clinicians need to collect at each appointment, our population health group chose not to add the health maintenance tab for lung cancer screening to our EHR. We wanted to find a more efficient, reliable way to understand the risk within our community and ensure patients weren’t falling through the cracks.”
+270% scheduled low-dose lung CT
Recognizing this challenge, Nebraska Medicine chose CancerIQ Reach, the precision health platform’s latest offering designed to drive patient acquisition and retention. CancerIQ helped Nebraska Medicine identify patients within the system who had any recorded history of smoking and conduct targeted outreach through its patient portal. CancerIQ’s white-labeled marketing toolkits made it easy to scale personalized outreach to the right patients at the right time — and use the right language. CancerIQ’s tool kits include ready-to-go language proven to motivate patients with known adherence risk, based on over a decade of running outreach campaigns across the country. With this support from CancerIQ, Nebraska Medicine was able to deliver a simple, effective message: Complete a short, online cancer risk assessment.
The health system found this approach six times more effective in engaging patients in risk assessment. Nebraska Medicine’s lung cancer outreach campaign yielded a 29% response rate, up significantly from 5% to 6% in previous efforts. Most importantly, the campaign drove a significant increase in patient acquisition for the lung cancer screening clinic. Nebraska Medicine has seen a 270% monthly increase in low-dose CT scans scheduled by new high-risk patients.
HOW IT WORKS
Personalized care pathways lead to lasting engagement and downstream ROI
Upon completion of the online cancer risk assessment, patients received a comprehensive, personalized report in real-time. CancerIQ’s platform automates USPSTF lung cancer screening recommendations and National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) clinical guidelines, alongside other leading risk models for the most common cancers.
This ensures that every patient receives the most accurate risk estimate possible — and that providers can easily identify patients in need of additional services. The risk report also contains dynamic educational materials and an action plan, so patients know how to take the next step within the health system. Results were shareable with family members to encourage them to learn their cancer risk. This patient-enabled approach has allowed Nebraska Medicine staff to maximize appointment time around shared decision making, rather than data collection.
"CancerIQ provided us with the technology and the expertise to efficiently identify patients who may have an elevated risk of cancer, contact them through targeted outreach, and determine whether they were eligible for additional services based on their responses to the risk assessment — all without overburdening our IT and marketing teams," Schmidt said.
Because CancerIQ’s risk stratification and recommendation engine takes into account the full spectrum of cancer risk — including family history, hereditary, lifestyle and adherence risk factors — the lung cancer early detection campaign led to an increase in downstream, multidisciplinary services to prevent, detect and treat lung cancer, breast cancer and other health conditions:
Post-lung cancer diagnosis:
4 early stage lung cancers have been detected and treated at Nebraska Medicine as a result of this campaign.
Post-LDLCT
26 patients were referred to pulmonology and five patients were referred to cardiology for other health conditions in the first two months alone.
Post-risk assessment:
41.3% of patients were eligible for additional cancer screening services, such as breast MRI or genetic testing.
To help Nebraska Medicine manage the wide variety of downstream care, CancerIQ’s platform provided fully integrated clinical guidance, one-click generation of consult and progress notes, automated administrative documentation, customizable referral letter templates, and access to a full suite of testing vendors. This enabled providers across the health system to easily manage long-term follow up care and make adjustments as medical management guidance changes.
Measurable impact demonstrates potential to scale
Following the success of the lung cancer screening campaign, Nebraska Medicine has continued to grow its community outreach efforts. CancerIQ Reach has enabled Nebraska Medicine to target additional populations, including its own employees and even prospective patients in the community. The health system rolled out culturally tailored landing pages for online cancer risk assessment that it promoted at local events, increasing awareness of available screening services among patients who had no prior touchpoints with the health system.
Nebraska Medicine is now replicating the lung cancer screening campaign in other clinical settings. The health system is deploying CancerIQ Reach in gastroenterology to stratify patient risk and maximize capacity for colonoscopies among the highest risk patients, while navigating average risk patients to less invasive options like Cologuard or FIT.
“We have noticed this measurable systemwide impact,” Schmidt said. “We know this model is replicable and we want to deploy it across multiple cancer types and subspecialties to drive growth in high-value service lines across the health system.”
CancerIQ Reach supports early detection
The ultimate goal of Nebraska Medicine's lung cancer early detection campaign was to identify lung cancer in its population earlier — and the campaign was successful in achieving that goal. In the first two months alone, the campaign helped four patients detect Stage 1A lung cancer. These patients would not have otherwise known they had cancer, and this early diagnosis significantly improved their potential treatment outcomes. A Stage 1 lung cancer diagnosis is associated with a five-year survival rate of 65%, though longitudinal studies suggest that the survival rate for Stage 1A cancer may be even higher. All four patients have been successfully treated at the cancer center.
PATIENT STORY
The patient was a 55-year-old woman who had a 40 pack-year history after smoking two packs a day for 20 years. She regularly visited a primary care clinic at Nebraska Medicine but had never discussed lung cancer screening. When she received a message in her patient portal to complete the CancerIQ risk assessment, she learned she was at elevated risk for lung cancer.
After risk assessment, the patient was navigated to low-dose CT screening, which found a Lung-RADS category 4 nodule. This screening result indicated that the nodule was suspicious and additional diagnostic testing was recommended. The patient was then referred to thoracic medicine for a full workup, including a pulmonary function test and a PET/CT scan. She underwent minimally invasive surgery, a robotic-assisted VATS right middle lobectomy, and was diagnosed with Stage 1A lung cancer. No additional treatment was required, but the patient will continue to undergo imaging surveillance as a cancer survivor.
“Today, this patient is doing great,” Schmidt said. “She keeps saying how incredibly thankful she is that we reached out to her and let her know about her screening options.”
HEAR FROM RACHAEL
Watch our webinar: What is Campaign-Based Risk Assessment & How Does it Drive Cancer Screening Compliance?
WATCH THE RECORDING
Discover how Nebraska Medicine transformed their approach to cancer screening by implementing CancerIQ’s newest digital tools for targeted, campaign-based patient outreach
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