Osteoporosis Screening
The aphorism, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it,” applies to The Rheumatologist August 2017 article that documents the continued low screening rates for those at high risk for osteoporosis-related fragility fractures, in particular people older than 65 and those who have suffered a fracture already. So here’s a bit of history regarding this intractable problem.
Between 2000 and 2008, a prior generation of clinician leaders in osteoporosis management identified the under-diagnosis of osteoporosis and participated in multiple initiatives to close this care gap. These efforts were widely published, as documented in the attached references, which I recommend highly to the current generation of experts.1–5 The problems with osteoporosis care are, in fact, identical to those documented for all chronic diseases, and the well-recognized solutions are the same.6-8
Previous osteoporosis improvement efforts culminated in a Bone Health Alliance proposal to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality spearheaded by Richard Dell, MD, of Kaiser and Daniel Solomon, MD, MPH, among others, in 2009, as I recall. The purpose was to diffuse more effective population management processes that we had already validated to other U.S. health systems, and to establish a higher standard of care by doing so. The reviewers rejected this implementation study proposal as an unproved strategy, the initiative died, and years later, we face the same embarrassing care gaps, and society suffers from the preventable morbidities and costs.
The core problem in practices and health systems that precludes effective prevention and treatment of chronic diseases, including osteoporosis, is well documented; it is the reliance on physician encounters with individual patients to provide necessary care. For fracture patients, the disconnects across the multiple practices that manage these patients magnify these failures. I believe the suggestion by Karen Hansen, MD, MS, that rheumatologists can solve this problem by spending more time educating their individual patients is nonsense. Dr. Hansen should remember these prior practice improvement initiatives and their effectiveness; she was a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin at the time we published our results from the same institution.
The results of the Rheumatoid Arthritis Practice Performance (RAPP) Project, published more recently in The Rheumatologist (June 2015), document that the core barrier to effective rheumatology care is physician bottlenecking: Clinicians do not have the time to provide all the necessary care themselves during encounters for all their patients when needed.10,11 The shortage of rheumatologists documented in the 2015 ACR Workforce Study amplifies the futility of doing things the same ways and expecting better results, as do proposals to train more rheumatologists to do things the same old ways.12 Bottlenecking is also a major reason for increasing physician stress and burnout.13
