Your patient tells you she has had a colonoscopy. Can you be sure she’s correct? If a recent study of patients in New York City is representative, the answer is probably not.
An inspection of patient records at Lenox Hill Hospital found documentation of self-reported colonoscopy in only 15% of cases, according to David Kadosh, MD, of Lenox Hill, part of the Northwell Health system, in a poster presented at the virtual 2020 meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology (abstract P2561).
“Screening for colorectal cancer is often self-reported from the patient and there are several obstacles to obtaining and validating reports. Our goal was to investigate inconsistent recording of colonoscopy cancer screenings in the outpatient setting to identify potential biases, misrepresentations in reports, and verify cancer screening rates,” Kadosh said.