CHTI Blog

Meet Corie Rhodes, a physician shaping quality improvement initiatives across Penn Medicine Primary Care.

Mammogram completion rose by 13 percentage points when patients had the ability to self-schedule a screening through the electronic health record portal. The research supports self-scheduling – a low-cost, scalable intervention that reduces friction in care pathways and increases patient autonomy – as a means to improve screening completion rates.

Each month, we round up news stories and publications about work happening across CHTI. Read the latest issue and subscribe to have the Month in Review sent directly to your inbox.

Kirstin Leitner, a physician lead on the Healing at Home program, explains how a text messaging bot that uses natural language processing is helping patients in the postnatal period. She also shares strategies used to make the bot more effective, like educating patients on how to interact with it and incorporating algorithmic approaches with symptom reporting.

Patients who report lower pain scores, are younger, and have not taken opioids before are less likely to need opioids after common surgical procedures, a new study shows. The findings could be applied to tailor prescribing and reduce prolonged exposure to opioids and unused pills. The research was led by members of the Center for Insights to Outcomes and the Nudge Unit and leveraged Way to Health for data collection.