ACP Hospitalist: Hospitalists Can Help Eliminate HCV

From ACP Hospitalist: …Given these factors and the USPSTF’s recommendation, some states have mandated that hospitals screen for HCV. For example, in 2016, Pennsylvania enacted a law requiring that anyone born between 1945 and 1965 be screened as part of inpatient or outpatient care. In response, Penn Medicine in Philadelphia tried to implement screening, by adding an alert in its electronic health record (EHR) that recommended clinicians order an HCV test. “We found there was limited uptake of this original best practice alert,” said Shivan J. Mehta, MD, MBA, MSHP, a gastroenterologist, an associate professor of medicine, and associate chief innovation officer at Penn Medicine. “We decided to shift it from an opt-in approach to an opt-out approach to ordering, because hepatitis C screening is a very inexpensive and easy-to-administer test.” In 2020, two hospitals in the system had an order for HCV screening embedded within their admission order sets for all patients born from 1945 to 1965. (The study was designed before the USPSTF recommendation changed.) Once that was done, screening rates in this population rose from 38.1% to 69.9%, according to a study Dr. Mehta and colleagues published in JAMA Network Open on March 17, 2022. Read more at ACP Hospitalist.