Oatmeal Healthoatmealhealth.com · public-data estimate, October 2026

Boston Childrens Hospital

Lung screening gap across 18 counties in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire

260,000to470,000adults in its service area qualify for lung cancer screening and are not being screened

About 7,100 people here are diagnosed with lung cancer each year, and 58% are found at a late stage, when it is hardest to treat.

Explore the screening network
NYMEVTNJNH
18 counties1 acute care hospitalService area
350,000 to 640,000adults likely qualify under USPSTF 2021 criteria (estimate)
3,600lung cancer deaths a year in these counties, 2020 to 2024
25.8%of eligible adults screened in these states, vs 18.2% nationally

Estimates from public data only; no patient information. Sources and method below.

Where the eligible adults live

The counties where most of Boston Childrens Hospital's Medicare inpatients live. Darker areas hold more adults who likely qualify, which is where outreach would start. Hover or tap any area for its estimate.

Adults likely eligible, per neighborhood

0+160+220+270+320+370+460+

Acute care hospital in this system

Counties in the service area

CountyStateAdults likely eligibleLung cancer deaths per 100kMedicare screens billed locally, 2024
Middlesex CountyMassachusetts47,800 to 105,90024.62,029
New Haven CountyConnecticut32,200 to 61,50028.71,487
Worcester CountyMassachusetts37,300 to 59,50030.4923
Essex CountyMassachusetts32,900 to 58,00027.41,285
Norfolk CountyMassachusetts23,500 to 48,90026.51,039
Suffolk CountyMassachusetts22,100 to 44,90025.77,362
Bristol CountyMassachusetts32,900 to 39,00036.61,122
Plymouth CountyMassachusetts24,500 to 38,00028.7721
Hampden CountyMassachusetts23,400 to 34,70032.9619
Hillsborough CountyNew Hampshire16,400 to 34,00030.41,327
Rockingham CountyNew Hampshire13,000 to 27,70029.1378
York CountyMaine11,900 to 20,80033.6180
Barnstable CountyMassachusetts11,900 to 20,30026.5302
Hampshire CountyMassachusetts5,400 to 10,90025.8143
Berkshire CountyMassachusetts6,700 to 10,60027.2929
Strafford CountyNew Hampshire4,900 to 9,70036.4133
Cheshire CountyNew Hampshire3,600 to 6,50033.2None billed locally
Franklin CountyMassachusetts3,800 to 6,00032.9145

1 of the 18 counties had no Medicare lung screening reads billed from a local address in 2024. County names link to their Missing Millions page.

What closing the gap would mean

If screening in these counties rose from 25.8% to 30.8%, five points above today, about 17,700 to 31,800 more people would be screened each year.

In the National Lung Screening Trial, low-dose CT screening lowered lung cancer deaths by 20% compared with chest X-ray. Today about 58% of lung cancers here are found at a late stage.

Illustrative estimate: eligible adults (range) times the change in screening rate. Not a forecast or a guarantee.

Each year in these counties

7,100new lung cancers
4,200found at a late stage
3,600lung cancer deaths

NCI and CDC State Cancer Profiles, annual averages.

Screening at Boston Childrens Hospital today

Clinicians at Boston Childrens Hospital locations billed 11 low-dose CT lung screening reads to Medicare fee-for-service in 2024. Including Medicare Advantage and other insurers, we estimate about 20 to 50 screenings a year.

Most adults who qualify see a primary care clinician every year. We count 1,188 primary care clinicians, 2 pulmonologists and 22 thoracic surgeons practicing at Boston Childrens Hospital locations. A 20 pack-year smoking history is often missing from structured EHR fields, so many eligible patients are never flagged.

CMS Medicare Physician and Other Practitioners 2024 (CPT 71271); clinicians matched to Boston Childrens Hospital by practice address using the AHRQ Compendium of U.S. Health Systems 2023, so reads billed by outside radiology groups are not included. The all-payer estimate scales Medicare fee-for-service by the local Medicare Advantage share (33%, CMS) and, at the high end, by the share of eligible adults under 65 (64%).

1 acute care hospital

  • Childrens Hospital CorporationBoston, MA

Find them, reach them, give radiologists a second opinion

LungIQ Find

Reads clinical notes, diagnoses and medications in the EHR and returns a ranked list of patients likely eligible, including those whose pack-year history is missing. Start with a CSV export refreshed every 1, 3 or 6 months, or connect through FHIR or HL7.

LungNAV Reach

An AI patient navigator that texts and calls patients in 70+ languages, answers questions about the scan, and hands each patient to your scheduling team or nurse navigators with a call summary.

LungAI Second opinion

Gives radiologists a malignancy risk score for each nodule, factoring in change since the prior scan, inside the PACS and CADe software they already use. The radiologist makes the final call.

LungAI is an investigational medical device and has not been cleared by FDA. It is not commercially available in the United States.

How we estimate the gap

Modeled estimates from public data. They are not a count of Boston Childrens Hospital patients and contain no patient information.

  • Service area: CMS Hospital Service Area File 2025 (counties within 120 miles of a system hospital holding 80% of its Medicare inpatients, plus any county with at least 1%); hospitals from the AHRQ Compendium of U.S. Health Systems, 2023.
  • Eligible adults, low estimate: Oatmeal Health Missing Millions (Census 2025 population, CDC PLACES smoking, USPSTF 2021).
  • Eligible adults, high estimate: University of Minnesota National Lung Cancer Screening Estimates (Haynes 2026), which also counts former smokers.
  • Screening rate: American Lung Association, State of Lung Cancer 2025.
  • Lung cancer cases and deaths: NCI and CDC State Cancer Profiles (incidence 2019 to 2023, deaths 2020 to 2024).
  • Screening volume: CMS Medicare Physician and Other Practitioners, 2024; CMS Medicare Advantage State/County Penetration, September 2026.

LungAI is an investigational medical device and has not been cleared by FDA. Oatmeal Health is preparing a 510(k) premarket notification. LungAI is not commercially available in the United States.

See Boston Childrens Hospital's own numbers

In a 30 minute review we replace these public estimates with counts from your own records and agree on what a first program would look like.

Request a private screening review