A Pragmatic Approach to Melanoma Screening in Collaboration With Primary Care Providers

Evidence from the SCREEN (Skin Cancer Research to provide Evidence for Effectiveness of Screening in Northern Germany) project supports PCP-based screening. In the 5 years following a 1-year pilot screening program, there was nearly a 50% reduction in melanoma mortality.⁵ Unfortunately, these encouraging results were not confirmed once the pilot project was translated into a national skin cancer screening program.⁶ However, there are lessons to be learned from the German project and we propose that PCP-led screening is feasible and practical in the United States and we currently have a pilot program in our institution, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).

In the SCREEN project and in routine practice across the United States, screening is primarily driven by patients. Generally, higher-risk patients such as men and the elderly are the least likely group to seek skin cancer screening. In our program, PCPs are offered training in skin cancer screening using a validated web-based program and alerted through the electronic health record to offer skin cancer screening annually to patients 35 years and older who present for routine primary care visits.⁷ This approach reduces self-referral bias by promoting physician initiation rather than patient initiation of screening, which can occur while the patient is already in the PCP’s office.

Melanoma thickness can be measured among screened patients, unscreened patients, and historic controls and compared to determine if this approach is effective. Health care utilization data can help to inform us if this approach leads to more skin biopsies and procedures or to an increased rate of dermatology referrals. As health care payment and delivery models evolve, there is greater emphasis on outcomes and team-based care. We believe that this approach will allow us to form effective teams of PCPs, dermatologists, and other experts in melanoma, public health, and informatics to reduce melanoma mortality in a cost-effective manner.