The Use of Registered Nurses to Perform Flexible Sigmoidoscopy Procedures in Ontario: A Cost Minimization Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
RATIONALE: Rates of colorectal cancer (CRC) are on the rise in Canada. Flexible sigmoidoscopy (FS) is an initial screening test for CRC primarily used in adults aged 50 years and older at average risk for the disease. Physicians and registered nurses have been shown to have the same effectiveness in performing a FS procedure. This paper presents an analysis of the use of registered nurses (RN) compared to physicians in Ontario to assess costs to the healthcare system. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate whether FS performed by RNs is a less costly alternative to increase access to CRC screening capacity in Ontario. METHODOLOGY: A cost minimization analysis was conducted from a health system perspective. DISCUSSION: RN-performed FS is a viable alternative for increasing CRC screening capacity in Ontario. Remuneration schedules for on-call physicians must be taken into consideration if policies are developed for the implementation of RN screening procedures. RESULTS: The findings suggest that the use of RNs may be cost saving compared to physician-performed FS procedures, depending on physician remuneration.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".