Increasing Rates of Tobacco Treatment Delivery in Primary Care Practice: Evaluation of the Ottawa Model for Smoking Cessation

Wonderful confirmation of what I can affirm is a very effective approach to offering assistance to patients in their journey to become smoke-free. Our Team implemented this model in early 2011, and it has been an ongoing success story.

By defining specific roles for office staff, allied health providers, and physicians within the framework of the Ottawa Model, this Team-based approach to smoking cessation divides what would otherwise be a time-prohibitive task into easy-to-manage components that make it a pleasure to offer this imperative preventative health intervention to patients.

Our own internal monitoring of quit rates in the patients who have had Team involvement in their cessation attempts verifies that over 5 years, our quit rates at 6 months and beyond hold at approximately 30%. This is remarkable for such a simple intervention, particularly when the similar statistic for unassisted quit attempts sits at 5-7%.

Patient feedback is very positive, and there is now a high level of both initial patient self-referral to our program (which is by now well-known to our patient population), and patient re-engagement with our program after relapse.

Hopefully this type of approach will become the standard provided to all Canadian patients within primary care settings.

Competing interests: I have received speaker's honoraria from Pfizer.