Blood-based cancer screening is reaching the market fast: enabling a single draw, no scanner and a testing method that can travel to the patient. The organizations getting the most from it are building the operations to match, turning a positive result into a timely diagnostic workup.
Eight executives who run cancer services at health systems nationwide shared their approaches on a closed-door Becker’s Healthcare advisory discussion. The throughline: what works is multifaceted, never a single step. One system paired a blood-based triage test with guaranteed follow-up and lifted scan uptake to nearly 60% among high-risk patients who had refused a low-dose CT. Others are standing up dedicated clinics — staffed by advanced practice providers, navigators and AI-assisted triage — to catch and route every positive result.
This report captures how they are preparing workflows and operations for earlier detection.
Inside, you’ll find:
- Why the handoff after a positive result is becoming a cancer-center job — and how leaders are staffing the triage layer primary care can’t absorb
- How the earliest movers design clinics around resolving a result, guaranteeing downstream workup before the first test is ordered
- How mobile and at-home collection extends screening to rural and underserved patients, and the follow-up guarantee that has to come with it
- The infrastructure leaders would prioritize to scale: patient registries, risk assessment, automated outreach, navigation and real-time analytics