Physician characteristics associated with higher adenoma detection rate.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Patients who receive a colonoscopy from a physician with a low adenoma detection rate (ADR) are at higher risk of subsequent colorectal cancer. It is unclear what drives the variation across physicians in ADR. We describe physician characteristics associated with higher ADR.

METHODS

In this retrospective cohort study a natural language processing system was used to analyze all outpatient colonoscopy examinations and their associated pathology reports from October 2013 to September 2015 for adults age 40 years and older across physicians from 4 diverse health systems. Physician performance on ADR was risk adjusted for differences in patient population and procedure indication. Our sample included 201 physicians performing at least 30 colonoscopy examinations during the study period, totaling 104,618 colonoscopy examinations.

RESULTS

The mean ADR was 33.2% (range, 6.3%-58.7%). Higher ADR was seen among female physicians (4.2 percentage points higher than men, P = .020), gastroenterologists (9.4 percentage points higher than nongastroenterologists, P < .001), and physicians with ≤9 years since their residency completion (6.0 percentage points higher than physicians who have had 27-51 years of practice, P = .004).

CONCLUSIONS

Gastroenterologists, female physicians, and more recently trained physicians had higher performance in adenoma detection.