oatmealhealth.com · public-data estimate, October 2026Houston Methodist
Lung screening gap across 7 counties in Texas
About 2,900 people here are diagnosed with lung cancer each year, and 67% are found at a late stage, when it is hardest to treat.
Estimates from public data only; no patient information. Sources and method below.
Where the eligible adults live
The counties where most of Houston Methodist'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
Acute care hospital in this system
Counties in the service area
| County | Adults likely eligible | Lung cancer deaths per 100k | Medicare screens billed locally, 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harris County | 169,600 to 333,400 | 23.5 | 2,976 |
| Fort Bend County | 28,000 to 56,500 | 18.1 | None billed locally |
| Montgomery County | 26,800 to 45,700 | 29.5 | 17 |
| Galveston County | 15,100 to 28,500 | 32.6 | 197 |
| Brazoria County | 14,200 to 27,500 | 32.2 | 171 |
| Liberty County | 5,400 to 6,400 | 43.7 | 19 |
| Chambers County | 2,100 to 3,000 | 34.7 | None billed locally |
2 of the 7 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 12.0% to the national rate of 18.2%, about 16,200 to 31,100 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 67% 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
NCI and CDC State Cancer Profiles, annual averages.
Screening at Houston Methodist today
Clinicians at Houston Methodist locations billed 215 low-dose CT lung screening reads to Medicare fee-for-service in 2024. Including Medicare Advantage and other insurers, we estimate about 530 to 1,700 screenings a year.
Most adults who qualify see a primary care clinician every year. We count 833 primary care clinicians, 22 pulmonologists and 6 thoracic surgeons practicing at Houston Methodist 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 Houston Methodist 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 (59%, CMS) and, at the high end, by the share of eligible adults under 65 (69%).
7 acute care hospitals
- The Methodist HospitalHouston, TX
- Methodist Willowbrook HospitalHouston, TX
- Methodist Sugar Land HospitalSugar Land, TX
- Houston Methodist the WoodlandsThe Woodlands, TX
- Methodist West Houston HospitalHouston, TX
- San Jacinto Methodist HospitalBaytown, TX
- Houston Methodist Clear Lake HospitalNassau Bay, TX
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 Houston Methodist 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 Houston Methodist'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.
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