When a Result Letter Becomes a Care Pathway

A group of mammography facilities affiliated with a hospital had developed a breast cancer risk assessment program in partnership with the hospital's genetic counseling department. Patients were being assessed for elevated lifetime breast cancer risk — but the clinical value of those assessments was only realized if patients and their physicians actually knew what to do next.

The facilities wanted to close that loop. The goal was to incorporate each patient's risk assessment result into the communication process — not as a separate administrative artifact, but as a meaningful message embedded in the workflow the patient and physician were already receiving.

Mammologix supported the program in two phases, reflecting how the organization's thinking about communication strategy evolved over time.

In the first phase, Mammologix produced dedicated communications — separate letters to both the patient and the ordering physician — carrying the risk assessment information alongside appropriate context and resources. The program ran at significant scale. Approximately 100,000 communications were produced through that initial implementation.

100,000 communications. Then the organization looked at the data and refined the question they were trying to answer.

After that first phase, the communication strategy was restructured around a more specific clinical threshold. Rather than generating risk-related communications for a broad patient population, the program was narrowed to focus on patients whose breast cancer lifetime risk assessment exceeded 20% — the threshold that carries distinct clinical implications for supplemental screening and management.

For those patients, Mammologix incorporated a targeted message and supplemental insert directly into the mammography result letter. The insert directed patients toward the genetic counseling resources developed by the hospital program and helped connect them with the specific services available through the facility. It did not require a separate communication workflow. It arrived with the result letter the patient was already expecting.

The result letter had become a care pathway. A patient who might otherwise have received a generic normal result and nothing more was now receiving — in the same communication — a clear, program-specific message pointing her toward the right next step.

The structure of the communication could also be adapted to fit how the facility wanted to operate. Separate patient and physician letters for a broader group, or an integrated insert within the result letter for a defined high-risk subset — the model accommodated both approaches.

Mammography result letters reach patients at a moment when they are already paying attention. That moment is an opportunity — not only to deliver a result, but to connect a patient with care they may not have known was available to them.