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º£½ÇÉçÇø — By pre-ordering lipid panels—the tests that can indicate high cholesterol and help predict stroke and heart disease risk—clinicians could significantly improve the rate of patients who get the tests done. After patients were prompted in a study conducted by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania to schedule lipid labs by receiving an automatic signed order from their primary care clinician through the mail, the completion rate, three months afterward, was about 15 percent. Patients in a control group in the study who received standard care—an order received at their typical primary care clinician visit—only completed their labs at a rate of roughly 6 percent by three months. When the researchers looked at results at six months, the rate of completion leveled out between the groups. However, getting so many more patients to complete their screenings quickly, at the three-month mark, was encouraging for preventive health purposes when timing can be critical.

“This work falls in line with previous work we’ve done examining screenings for and , showing that direct outreach outside visits and making screening orders the default can create significant jumps in completion rates,” said , an associate professor of Gastroenterology and the associate chief innovation officer of Penn Medicine, who served as senior author of the  paper. “We believe that by continuing to make the best choices the easiest ones, we can keep improving our patients’ health.”