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Thanks to recent initiatives from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), health care providers have some new, simple tools for helping their patients quit smoking.
These include a new national "quitline" network, greater insurance reimbursement for smoking-cessation treatment, and an online continuing-education program for doctors who want realistic tips on helping patients kick the habit.
"We really need more physicians to have basic systems in place for identifying smokers and for steering them into treatment," says Steven A. Schroeder, MD, director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at the University of California-San Francisco. "There's growing evidence that clinicians' help can make a difference."
One easy step is to provide patients with the toll-free number (1-800-QUIT-NOW) for the new National Network of Tobacco Cessation Quitlines. The number serves as a single access point, routing callers either to their state quitline services or, in states where these are not yet available, to telephone counselors at the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Information Service.
"We call this taking 30 seconds to save a life," says Schroeder. HHS reports that quitlines are effective for helping smokers quit and that telephone counseling can significantly increase long-term quit rates compared with self-help materials alone. To make counseling services more accessible to smokers, Medicare also will begin covering smoking-cessation services to about 4 million seniors. Some have certain tobacco-related illnesses (including heart, cerebrovascular, and lung diseases; osteoporosis; blood clots; or cataracts); others have diabetes or high blood pressure, and therefore their health could be further compromised by smoking. The expanded coverage, expected to begin this spring, will pay for up to two rounds of four professional counseling sessions per year.
Private health insurers are also stepping up. A study of 152 health plans, published in the October 2004 issue of Preventing Chronic Disease, noted a dramatic increase since 1997 in smoking-cessation treatment coverage.1 About 98% of these surveyed plans, covering more than 43 million members, now provide full coverage for at least one smoking-cessation intervention (particularly pharmacotherapies), the study reported.
To help primary care physicians become more proactive in encouraging patient-smokers to quit, HHS also has teamed with Medscape to offer a free online continuing education (CME) course designed to provide practical strategies.
The bottom line, says Schroeder, is "there is no other intervention
for chronic illness—not mammograms, not colonoscopies, not
statins—nothing that does as much good at saving lives as getting
patients to quit smoking." 
Footnotes
The "Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence" course offers a maximum of one category-1 credit toward the AMA Physician's Recognition Award.
It can be accessed at www.medscape.com/cmecircle/quitsmoking.
For more information, visit the Center for Tobacco Cessation online at http://ctcinfo.org.
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