Patient, provider, and clinic factors associated with the use of cervical cancer screening

Cervical cancer screening delivery remains suboptimal. Understanding the multiple influences on use of screening is important to designing interventions. We describe the influence of patient, primary care provider (PCP), and clinic characteristics on whether a woman is up-to-date with cervical screening as of December 2016. PCPs (n = 194) and their female screen-eligible patients age 21–65 years (n = 32,115) were included in this cross-sectional analysis of patients from two primary care networks linked to a contemporaneous PCP survey. Principal independent variables for patients included: age, race, insurance, continuity of care; for PCP included: overall satisfaction with the practice of medicine, gender, hours worked per week, financial support for achieving clinical targets; and for clinic included: routine receipt of data on preventive care performance and language translation resources. Overall, 66.6% of women were up-to-date. Women were less likely to be up-to-date with cervical cancer screening if they were younger and were more likely to be screened if they were Black, Hispanic or Asian vs. White. Women with greater continuity of primary care or with a female PCP were more likely to be up-to-date (1.52; 1.33–1.75); those who received care in a clinic that was less prepared to manage language translation were less likely to be up-to-date (0.78; 0.65–0.95). Patient, provider, and clinic factors all influence use of cervical cancer screening. Systems interventions like improving continuity of care, promoting translation services, or enhanced efforts to track screening among patients of male PCPs may improve delivery.