Community Health & Engagement

Connecting care: How St. Luke’s teams are using focused data to address major Idaho issue

By Dave SouthornLast Updated March 18, 2026

Though Idaho has one of the lowest rates of breast cancer screenings in the nation, St. Luke’s teams are utilizing data to identify areas of greatest need in our communities.

According to the National Cancer Institute, only one state has a lower rate than the Gem State’s 65.3% of women 40 or older who have had a mammogram in the last two years.

The breast care services team at St. Luke’s has fought to address that not just in clinical spaces, but out in the community, too. Among those efforts is mobile breast health clinic units in the Treasure Valley and the newest, covering areas to the east including Elmore County and the Twin Falls area. St. Luke’s foundations in those areas raised $400,000 to get the unit rolling.

St. Luke’s mobile breast health clinic parked in a gravel parking lot. — The mobile breast health clinic parked in Hagerman, a city of approximately 1,000 in Gooding County. Locating need in rural communities like it will help more patients get the right care, potentially saving lives through early detection.

Dr. Alejandro Necochea, a hospitalist and medical director of St. Luke’s Community Health and Engagement department, wanted to help those efforts.

“I’ve seen women come in for the first time and having stage IV cancer, even young women,” Necochea said. “I thought working closer with Breast Care Services, utilizing some of the data we have available to us, where are there gaps and how can we address that?”

Simply put, using data compiled by St. Luke’s Health Partners, areas where women were overdue for mammograms can be pinpointed to street level. These places were put on a heat map, visually showing the need and potentially being able to change lives in those areas.

As an integrated health system, St. Luke’s is delivering care in a variety of settings, funding care through St. Luke’s Health Plan, and connecting patients and communities to the care they need.

St. Luke’s Health Partners engages with payers, such as government and insurance, taking accountability for the management of health populations. The value-based care arrangement is focused on prevention and the most cost-effective delivery of care.

“It’s something we will do annually, look at data to make sure we’re going to the places we need to go and we’re filling that mobile unit everywhere it goes,” Necochea said.

Community Health & Engagement

Connecting care: How St. Luke’s teams are using focused data to address major Idaho issue

By Dave SouthornLast Updated March 18, 2026

Though Idaho has one of the lowest rates of breast cancer screenings in the nation, St. Luke’s teams are utilizing data to identify areas of greatest need in our communities.

According to the National Cancer Institute, only one state has a lower rate than the Gem State’s 65.3% of women 40 or older who have had a mammogram in the last two years.

Dr. Alejandro Necochea, a hospitalist and medical director of St. Luke’s Community Health and Engagement department, wanted to help those efforts.

As an integrated health system, St. Luke’s is delivering care in a variety of settings, funding care through St. Luke’s Health Plan, and connecting patients and communities to the care they need.

“It’s something we will do annually, look at data to make sure we’re going to the places we need to go and we’re filling that mobile unit everywhere it goes,” Necochea said.

Colorful heat map identifying areas of need. — A look at a heat map provided by Dr. Alejandro Necochea, used in conjunction with the breast care services team, to find areas where women are overdue for mammograms.

And in 2026, he expects that collaboration to be “full force.” Areas in Boise and Nampa have been identified and nearby schools have been receptive to hosting the mobile unit.

Necochea said, for example, New Meadows, a community near McCall where transportation may not be widely available, is a place that has a need that can be met by the unit. The unit saw patients at the Duck Valley Reservation on the Idaho-Nevada border for the first time in years.

“We’re excited about the possibilities of what we can do going forward into the future,” said Cathy Miller, director of St. Luke’s Patient Access.

As the Breast Care Services team is growing and expanding, it hopefully will allow those targeted approaches to see strong results.

Perhaps some communities will need to be visited more than once that are hosting the unit annually or needs could mean dispatching additional resources. It takes lots of planning, even if the mobile care is, well, mobile.

“We have some real operational opportunities … with the level of partnership we have with St. Luke’s Health Partners to provide geographical data,” said Alicia Young, ambulatory chief nursing officer. “We’re excited to build on that. We’ve been able to deliver care in the appropriate way and we want to continue to expand our organization and collaboration … telling us where our greatest need is.”

And as far as Necochea is concerned, this is just the beginning.

“It can enable outreach in different avenues, find out where pediatric needs are or who our Medicaid patients are, maybe target people who used the emergency department often to tell them about virtual care, maybe you do it in Spanish if you have a large population,” he said.

“There are multiple applications of this geo-mapping we can use to identify communities that are lacking access of certain things where we can direct more of our attention.”