- Sustain a culture that values, supports, and promotes the prevention, screening and early detection of cancer.
- Ensure that health benefit plans cover, at either no cost or at a reasonable cost-sharing level, screening services for breast, colorectal and cervical cancer, and all FDA-approved vaccines for the prevention of cancer.
4a. Sustain a culture that values, supports and promotes the prevention, screening and early detection of cancer.
- An organization must demonstrate that their company culture promotes and encourages a high level of participation in age and gender-specific cancer screenings and vaccines.
- Educating employees about the importance of screening for breast, cervical and colorectal cancer, and when to be screened, is essential.
- There are many suggested ways to meet requirement 4a, -- not all are required, however, you’ll be required to check off a sufficient number of boxes under 4a to demonstrate that you have programming in place to educate employees about screening and, in the case of cervical cancer, vaccinations.
4b. Ensure that health benefit plans cover, at either no cost or at a reasonable cost-sharing level, screening services for breast, colorectal and cervical cancer, and all FDA-approved vaccines for the prevention of cancer.
- All health benefit plans, including self-insured or fully insured plans, must provide coverage for enrolled employees and their covered dependents for cancer screenings, and coverage for vaccines that have been approved by the FDA, and recommended by the CDC, for the prevention of cancer.
- All health benefit plans must cover the following specific tests and cancer screenings. All boxes on the accreditation application must be checked.
- Vaccines (Gardasil and/or Cervarix) against the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) for the prevention of cervical cancer.
- Screening mammography, with or without clinical breast exam (CBE), every 1-2 years for women aged 40 and older, for breast cancer.
- Pap tests, beginning within 3 years of onset of sexual activity or age 21 (whichever comes first), at least every 3 years for women, to prevent or detect cervical cancer.
- Fecal Occult Blood Tests (FOBT), every year for men and women aged 50 and older, to prevent or detect colorectal cancer.
- All health benefits plans must cover cancer screening and FDA-approved and CDC-recommended cancer vaccines (Gardasil and/or Cervarix) either at no cost to employees or their covered dependents or at a reasonable cost-sharing level defined as at a level that does not present an impediment to being screened or obtaining an appropriate vaccination.