No Ifs, Ands, or Buts: Leveraging Population Health to Focus on the Care of Patients Who Smoke

We developed a multidisciplinary curriculum to improve our residents’ proficiency with smoking cessation counseling and prescribing of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). The curriculum included a didactic portion, informational handouts, and a panel management component during which residents did telephone outreach and clinic in-reach to address high rates of smoking among patients. Residents rated their confidence with smoking cessation counseling and clinical knowledge before and after the intervention. We also tracked the number of patients flagged in the electronic medical record as smokers, the number of patients contacted, and the number of patients who received counseling. Although we did not make statistically significant improvements in perceived confidence with prescribing NRT, we found that there is an urgent need to address smoking cessation in the primary care setting and that working with a clinical pharmacist and psychologist offered a comprehensive approach. Furthermore, by anchoring the intervention with a population health component, almost 200 patients benefited from outreach efforts.