Benefits and barriers to implementing precision preventive care: results of a national physician survey

Background Clinical implementation of polygenic risk scores (PRS) for precision prevention depends on the utility and barriers primary care physicians (PCPs) perceive to their use. Methods An online survey asked PCPs in a national database about the clinical utility of PRS they perceived for categories of medical decision-making and perceived benefits of and barriers to that use. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify subgroups of PCPs based on response patterns. Results Among 367 respondents (email open rate 10.8%; participation rate 96.3%; completion rate 93.1%), mean (SD) age was 54.9 (12.9) years, 137 (37.3%) were female, and mean (SD) time since medical school graduation was 27.2 (13.3) years. Respondents reported greater perceived utility for more clinical action (e.g., earlier or more intensive screening, preventive medications, or lifestyle modification) for patients with high-risk PRS than for delayed or discontinued prevention actions for low-risk patients ( p <0.001). Respondents most often chose out-of-pocket costs (48%), lack of clinical guidelines (24%), and patient insurance discrimination concerns (22%) as extreme barriers to PRS implementation. LCA identified 3 subclasses of respondents. Skeptics (n=83, 22.6%) endorsed less agreement with individual clinical utilities, saw patient anxiety and insurance discrimination as significant barriers, and agreed less often that PRS could help patients make better health decisions. Learners (n=134, 36.5%) and enthusiasts (n=150, 40.9%) expressed similar levels of agreement that PRS had utility for preventive actions and that PRS could be useful for patient decision-making. Compared with enthusiasts , however, learners perceived greater barriers to the clinical use of PRS. Conclusion PCPs generally endorsed using PRS to guide medical decision-making about preventive care, with a preference for more clinical action over less. Barriers identified suggest interventions to address the needs and concerns of PCPs along the spectrum of acceptance and uptake.