MINNEAPOLIS – The HealthPartners Medical Group is using an electronic medical record and race information to raise awareness of colorectal cancer among African American patients.

The Minneapolis-based medical group launched the program in an attempt to save lives by providing more timely colorectal cancer screening for African American patients. Organizations such as the American College of Gastroenterology recommend that regular colorectal cancer screening for African Americans should begin at age 45, compared to age 50 for other races.

HealthPartners officials said the initiative uses the group's electronic medical record and race information, provided by patients to automatically generate reminders to African American patients to have a colonoscopy when they turn 45, and then at regular intervals through age 80.

“Nationally, colorectal cancer deaths are 48 percent higher among African Americans than among Caucasians,” said Brian Rank, MD, an oncologist and medical director of the HealthPartners Medical Group. “Our goal is to save lives by ensuring that more African American patients in our clinics receive recommended colorectal cancer screening in a timely manner.”

The EMR uses language preference information in addition to automatic reminders for patients for preventive screenings such as a colonoscopy, mammogram or PAP test.

“This information helps clinic staff to provide better care and support for patients, who by virtue of their language may have unique needs,” said Rank.

“We have made reducing health disparities a top priority,” he said. “Our ability to systematically customize care across our clinics for specific groups of patients would not be possible without our electronic medical record and the race and language preference data provided by our patients.”

Rank said HealthPartners clinics have collected race data on 90 percent of patients and language preference on all patients since they began collecting data in 2004.