Primary Care Provider Perceptions of Colorectal Cancer Screening Barriers: Implications for Designing Quality Improvement Interventions

Table 1

Sample characteristics of patients, providers, and clinics (overall and by provider perceptions of barriers).

	Overall	Multiple perceived barriers to CRC screening	No perceived barriers to CRC screening	value
Patient characteristics
Age, %				<0.001
50–54	27	27	27
55–59	27	27	26
60–64	21	21	21
65–69	14	14	14
70–75	11	11	12
Gender, %				<0.001
Female	56	61	48
Race, %				0.046
White	93	93	92
Marital status, %				0.004
Married	71	70	72
Language, %				<0.001
English (as primary language)	91	92	89
Primarily non-English	1	1	1
Unknown	8	7	10
Insurance, %				<0.001
Commercial	66	67	63
Medicare	24	24	25
Medicaid or uninsured	2	2	2
Missing	9	8	10
Comorbidities, %
Congestive heart failure	1	1	1	0.835
Diabetes mellitus	9	9	10	0.437
Hypertension	36	36	35	0.005
ACG resource utilization score (mean, SD)	0.58 (0.42)	0.58 (0.42)	0.58 (0.43)	0.537
Primary care provider characteristics
Age, %				0.470
30–39	24	20	27
40–49	26	29	23
50–59	25	28	22
60–69	9	11	8
Missing	16	12	20
Gender, %				0.043
Female	52	61	45
Specialty, %				0.133
Internal medicine	52	53	52
Family medicine	48	47	48
Years in practice, %				0.358
<10 yrs	18	15	21
10–20 yrs	31	33	30
>20 yrs	35	40	31
Missing	16	12	18
Average CRC screening rate (%) in the year prior to survey administration (mean, SD)	62 (17.5)	66 (15.7)	59 (18.4)	0.013
Number of patients eligible for CRC screening in a provider’s panel (mean, SD)	238 (232)	250 (182)	91 (128)	<0.001
Primary care clinic characteristics
Clinic management, %				0.77
Physician-owned	67	64	70
Hospital-owned	33	36	30
Distance to nearest colonoscopy center in miles, (mean, SD)	7.6 (5.6)	7.1 (3.8)	8.5 (7.7)	0.564
Number of providers within the clinic, (mean, SD)	6.9 (4.9)	8.4 (5.5)	4.8 (3.0)	0.074

SD = standard deviation, ACG = ambulatory care group, and CRC = colorectal cancer.