Tactics to Improve Lung Cancer Screening Rates: Raymond Osarogiagbon, MD

In the third clip from The American Journal of Managed Care®'s interview with Raymond Osarogiagbon, MD, director of the multidisciplinary thoracic oncology program at Baptist Cancer Center, during the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2025, he suggests ways clinicians and health systems can boost lung cancer screening rates among eligible patients.

Watch parts 1 and 2 to learn more about US lung cancer screening guidelines and the consequences of low screening uptake.

This transcript has been lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What strategies can clinicians and health systems use to increase lung cancer screening rates among eligible patients?

One of the things that we need to do is raise clinician awareness of lung cancer screening as an opportunity. It turns out, actually, lung cancer screening is a very profitable venture, purposefully designed that way because of the huge public health benefit.

Actually, there is a very powerful business case that can be made for institutions to develop lung cancer screening programs. There is a group, the National Lung Cancer Roundtable, that is actually centered within the American Cancer Society and includes multiple professional groups, radiology groups, representatives from the American College of Radiology, American College of Surgeons, American Society for Clinical Oncology, American College of Chest Physicians, and so on and so forth, as well as multiple institutions that have come together to help raise awareness of the possibilities.

One of the things that the National Lung Cancer Roundtable has done is develop something called LungPLAN. LungPLAN is a ready-made algorithm that is essentially a plug-and-play algorithm that will help programs and institutions to build the business case for lung cancer screening. Essentially, any institution can take their simple statistics about their patient population, the types of insurance contracts they have, and so on and so forth. Just plug in that information, and then out comes the return on investment to encourage the people who have to put money down to really invest in building out these programs, to encourage them that there is a very powerful business case to be made to provide these lifesaving screening opportunities.

Then, there are various things that we need to do with the various clinician specialties involved, especially radiologists, and the American College of Radiologists is all in on this, pulmonologists, medical oncologists, but most especially primary care providers and the physician extenders. [Those] really increasingly are the 2 groups that order screening tests, family practitioners and advanced practice providers (APPs). We need to get with them and their professional societies to help them understand the opportunity here and get them to participate in teaching their members the value of lung cancer screening.

Then, of course, we have to reach out to the population as well. Raise awareness among patients, among people. Again, it's not really patients, it's seemingly healthy people who are at risk, right? We need to help people know that if you're 50 and above and you have ever smoked, you need to talk to your doctor [about] whether you should be undergoing lung cancer screening.