Initiating HPV Co-testing for Women Aged 30-65 in an Ob/Gyn Practice Setting

The purpose of this project was to improve the rate of successful human papilloma virus (HPV) screening in a small Texas based Women\u27s Health clinic through a co-testing method. The intended goal was to increase the rate of HPV screening, from a 73% baseline, to 95% over a 10-week period for women between the ages of 30-65 years old. Approximately 79 million American women are currently infected with HPV, and 14 million people contract it every year. Seventy percent of cervical cancers today are caused by HPV, leading to approximately 12,820 new diagnoses of invasive cervical cancer predicted for 2017, with 4,210 women projected to die from of it. Women between the ages of 30-65, are 8 times more likely to contract invasive cervical cancers through HPV than women less than 30 years. Therefore, the project incorporated multiple interventions which included: increased patient screening appointments, the initiation of quality improvement meetings, and the use of the HPV co-testing protocol. At project completion, 107 patients between the ages of 30 and 65 had been successfully co-tested for HPV, with 104 patients having negative screening results and 3 patients with positive results. There was statistically significant improvement in HPV screening rates, from 73% to 93%. Implementing the co-testing method had a positive impact on HPV screening rates