National Lung Cancer Screening Program

Clinical items, qualifiers and reports for the National Lung Cancer Screening Program (NLCSP) are available for all health services through Central.

The NLCSP is a joint Australian, State and Territory Government targeted screening program scans to look for lung cancer in high-risk people without any signs or symptoms suggestive of lung cancer. The program is managed by the National Cancer Screening Register (NCSR) and:
  • Targets eligible people aged 50-70 years of age with a history of tobacco cigarette smoking.
  • Provides free low-dose CT scans to participants every two years unless a screen-detected abnormality is found.

Healthcare providers with an MBS provider number and authority to request CT imaging provide eligible participants with a low-dose CT scan request form and enrol participants in the program.

If your health service is already registered with the NCSR for the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program or the National Cervical Cancer Screening Program, you do not need to register again. If your health service is not registered, see https://www.ncsr.gov.au/information-for-healthcare-providers/healthcare-provider-forms-and-guides/healthcare-provider-portal-user-guide.html for more information.

Use the following clinical data to manage NLCSP screening, follow-up and interaction with the NCSR.
  • To identify patients who may be eligible to participate in the NLCSP, use a report that includes the smoking status qualifier. This qualifier is used in many reports, particularly check ups. For example:
    • Addiction;smoking;tobacco
    • Advice/education;smoking
    • CV Risk Calculator...
    • Check up;Aboriginal
    • Check up;RHD and acute rheumatic fever
    • Check up;antenatal
    • Check up;over 75s
    • Cough;smokers...
    • Counselling;smoking
    • Cycle of care;annual;diabetes
    • Exam;pre-consult
    • ITC...
    • Inhalation;smoke
    • National Lung Cancer Screening Program
    • Passive smoking
    • Problems;smoking;tobacco
    • Smokerlyzer...
    • Smokers lung
    • Smoking;tobacco
    • Unable (to);stop smoking
    • iSISTAQUIT;Assessment
    Alternatively, your Communicare Administrator could run Report > Patients > Patient Query to identify eligible patients, using age and qualifier operations. For example,Example Patient Query to identify patients of the right age group for NLCSP
    Example Patient Query to identify smokers eligible for NLCSP
  • Clinical items:
    • National Lung Cancer Screening Program
      Note:
      Your Communicare Administrator should add Low Dose CT scan to your health service's investigations list and keywords.
    • Results;lung cancer screening LDCT
  • Qualifiers:
    • Start Smoking Age
    • Quit Smoking Age
    • Duration Smoking
    • Average Daily Cigarette Consumption
    • Smoking Pack-Years
  • Letter template for referrals:
    • NLCSP Low Dose CT Referral (linked clinical information)
  • Automatic recall rules for recalls based on results: On Qualifier Results;lung cancer screening LDCT Recall for National Lung Cancer Screening Program, trigger for 24 months, 12 months, 6 months, 3 months.

    For more information, see Lung cancer screening recalls.

Tip:
Communicare Support may need to run Central Update out of hours before this clinical data is available.

Your Communicare Administrator may need to manually enable the clinical items in File > Reference Tables > Clinical Item Types and enable the automated recalls before clinicians can use them.

For Communicare technical support, speak to your Communicare Administrator or contact Communicare Support as normal.