Nov. 1, 2018─The American Thoracic Society and the American Lung Association’s LUNG FORCE initiative have launched a new website and online toolkit to help medical institutions implement and manage a lung cancer screening program.

In 2011, the National Lung Screening Trial reported that annual low-dose computed chest tomography could save the lives of current and former smokers at high risk of developing lung cancer by detecting the cancer early. In 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began covering the lung cancer screening test. Plans purchased through state marketplaces and most private insurers are also required to cover the diagnostic test.

Only a small fraction of the estimated eight to nine million individuals who meet the criteria for the screening have taken advantage of this potentially life-saving procedure.

“Hospitals face multiple barriers in implementing lung cancer screening,” said Carey C. Thomson, MD, MPH, director of the Lung Cancer Screening Program and chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Mount Auburn Hospital in Massachusetts. Dr. Thomson co-chaired the ATS and Lung Association effort with Andrea B. McKee, MD, co-chair of the Lung Cancer Screening Steering Committee and chief of radiation oncology at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Massachusetts.

“These barriers include knowledge gaps regarding current recommendations, CMS lung cancer screening shared decision-making requirements, logistical challenges and limited resources for program implementation, smoker stigmatization and self-stigmatization, and racial bias, among others,” the two physicians wrote in an editorial on the collaborative effort published in the Nov. 1 American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

To address the challenges institutions face in beginning a lung cancer screening program and managing it successfully, the ATS and the Lung Association created a Lung Cancer Screening Implementation Guide now available at LungCancerScreeningGuide.org. The guide was developed by a panel of experts involved in all aspects of U.S. lung cancer screening programs recognized for their high quality.

Importantly, Dr. Thomson says, the guide offers several potential solutions to the operational challenges presented by launching a lung cancer screening program. The panelists recognized that successful programs had to work in the context of the particular institutions and practices offering the service.

Among the lung cancer screening topics covered by the new website and implementation guide are:

ATS policy statements and guidelines for lung cancer screening
Program structures and management models
Provider outreach and education
CMS requirements
Quality metric reporting
Clinical decision support tools
Reporting examination results
Tracking data and registry reporting
Smoking cessation counseling
Both the website and implementation guide provide tools for documentation and data collection within the electronic health record, sample forms and patient outreach materials.

LungCancerScreeningGuide.org, which is supported by the ATS Thoracic Oncology Assembly and American Lung Association, will be updated annually and will be accessible through the ATS, Lung Association and American Cancer Society National Lung Cancer Roundtable websites.

“Our goal with this collaboration is to reduce mortality from lung cancer through expansion of high-quality lung cancer screening programs,” Dr. Thomson said, adding the website will be a “living resource” that will evolve as more knowledge is gained about lung cancer screening.