06 Apr Prevention That Meets People Where They Are
Most people intend to stay on top of their health.
They know screenings matter. They have heard the guidance. And yet, year after year, millions of preventive care opportunities are missed, not because people do not care, but because caring is not the same as completing.
The Gap Between Intent and Follow-Through
A January 2026 analysis from McKinsey found that women in the United States face an estimated gap of roughly 130 million missed screenings annually across just five areas: well-woman visits, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, osteoporosis, and diabetes.
The adherence rates behind those numbers are striking. Osteoporosis screening adherence ranges from 13 to 29%. Colorectal cancer screening sits at 27%. Well-woman visit completion runs between 38 and 46%.
And this is happening among women who are already in the healthcare system, who see clinicians more often than men on average. The issue is not simply access in the traditional sense. It is whether the right screenings are being completed, followed up on, and tracked over time.
What Drives the Gaps
Missed screenings rarely reflect a single failure. They tend to accumulate across a series of small breakdowns.
An appointment gets rescheduled and not rebooked. A referral is made but the next step is unclear. A reminder arrives at the wrong time or through a channel the person does not check. A care team assumes another provider handled it. The patient assumes the same.
These are coordination gaps, not clinical ones. The guidance exists. The screenings are available. What breaks down is the infrastructure that connects a recommendation to a completed action.
McKinsey estimates that closing these gaps across the five screening categories could generate up to $38 billion in net value for U.S. health systems. That figure reflects the downstream cost of delayed prevention: higher acuity, more complex treatment, and more expensive care that could have been avoided earlier.
Prevention as an Operational Problem
Framing prevention as an awareness challenge underestimates the real issue.
Most people who miss a screening are not unaware that the screening exists. They missed it because something in the process broke down, and no one closed the loop.
Effective preventive care requires the ability to identify who is overdue, reach them through the right channel at the right time, and support them through the next step, whether that is scheduling, addressing a barrier to access, or coordinating between providers.
Without that infrastructure, even well-designed care plans produce inconsistent results.
How Muse Health Approaches This
At Muse Health, we treat prevention as a coordination challenge.
Through Oasis Care Navigation, care teams gain visibility into where engagement is breaking down, drawing on claims data, clinical history, and behavioral patterns to identify members who are overdue for preventive services.
From there, care navigators support the next step. Scheduling a screening. Following up after a referral. Addressing access or logistical barriers that stand between a recommendation and completion.
The goal is not to remind people that prevention matters. They already know. The goal is to make it easier to actually stay connected to care over time.
Because prevention improves when systems are built to follow through, not just to recommend.
To learn more about how Oasis by Muse Health helps strengthen preventive care through engagement and coordination, visit mymusehealth.com.
References
- McKinsey and Company — The High Cost of Missed Prevention (January 2026): mckinsey.com
- McKinsey and Company — The $50 Billion Opportunity for US Health Systems to Improve Women’s Healthcare (November 2025): mckinsey.com