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Kaiser Permanente Southern California Physicians Offer Help for Patients Who Want to Quit Smoking

Posted on: Wednesday, 20 July 2005, 21:01 CDT

Kaiser Permanente Southern California physicians are helping their patients successfully quit smoking by following the U.S. Public Health Service's (USPHS) evidence-based 5 A program -- Asking, Advising, Assessing, Assisting and Arranging follow-up contact.

Researchers from Kaiser Permanente Southern California and eight other non-profit HMOs participated in the most comprehensive study to date of clinician compliance with the USPHS's national clinical practice guideline.

The results are published in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The study was conducted under funding from the National Cancer Institute to the Cancer Research Network.

"Cigarette smoking continues to be the principal cause of premature death in the nation," said Virginia Quinn, Ph.D., of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Research & Evaluation Department and the study's lead author. "An estimated 438,000 Americans die annually from smoking-related cancer, cardiovascular, and respiratory diseases. As the majority of smokers see a physician at least once a year, medical visits provide an important opportunity to address the substantial harm caused by tobacco use."

According to Quinn, the results are encouraging. All the health plans participating in the study have comprehensive policies and coverage for tobacco cessation. In the past year, most smokers were asked whether they smoked, the majority was advised to quit, and half of them were provided cessation interventions. These findings are better than reports from representative samples of U.S. adults.

"Health plans may be able to increase the effectiveness of their tobacco control efforts by encouraging smokers to ask their physicians for help," said Quinn. "We found smokers expect to receive the 5 As cessation treatments and are more satisfied with their health plan when clinicians comply with the national guideline. This should provide encouragement to physicians to treat smokers and an incentive to health care organizations to support delivery of tobacco-cessation services."

The full text of the study is available by email: ajpm@ucsd.edu.

Kaiser Permanente is America's leading integrated health plan. Founded in 1945, it is a nonprofit, group practice prepayment program with headquarters in Oakland, California. Kaiser Permanente serves the health care needs of 8.3 million members in 9 states and the District of Columbia. Today it encompasses the nonprofit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and their subsidiaries, and the for-profit Permanente Medical Groups. Nationwide, Kaiser Permanente includes approximately 140,000 technical, administrative and clerical employees and caregivers, and more than 11,000 physicians representing all specialties.

www.kaiserpermanente.org

Source: Business Wire

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