LouAnn Bala, Vice President, Clinical Solutions, Eon
Bart Daugherty, VP, Clinical Technology and Systems, Lifepoint Health
Routine screening for eligible patients considered at-risk under established clinical guidelines has long been the primary pathway to a breast cancer diagnosis. However, the potential to improve early detection through incidental findings is gaining undeniable momentum.
Data from a large-scale program across a multi-state health system prove that incidentals can not only play a role in improving diagnosis — and therefore outcomes — but that they represent a distinct, clinically high-risk population that should receive immediate follow-up and care. What’s more, a majority of patients identified through incidental findings who went on to develop cancer could have been missed in a screening-only model.
Real-life impact
The 53-site initiative implemented between Mar. 2023 and Dec. 2025 as part of the partnership between Eon and Lifepoint Health for early breast cancer detection demonstrates how making sure incidental findings receive timely and appropriate follow-up can deliver meaningful results for patients — and how missing them could potentially lead to serious adverse outcomes. Every single patient identified through an incidental pathway who receives appropriate care, and who otherwise may not have — especially if they were not traditionally eligible for routine screening — is potentially a life saved.
256 cancers diagnosed through incidental and screening pathways
1 in 8 breast cancer patients identified through incidental findings
2.7x increase in completed downstream exams per month for programs live for more than a year
51% of cancers diagnosed from incidental findings were traditionally not eligible for routine screening
Looking back to look forward
Driven by a mission of making communities healthier, Lifepoint Health has long had a focus on improving early diagnosis. The organization’s Healthy Person Program is an enterprise initiative across multiple disease areas including lung, pancreas, kidney, liver, thyroid and aortic aneurysms. A recent retrospective analysis of 5.6 million reports from across the health system revealed 1,685 patients with incidental breast abnormalities who required follow-up, of which 40% may not have been found because they did not meet screening guidelines in place at the time of the analysis either because of age or gender.
This prompted the system’s leaders to launch an initiative across 53 facilities to track and manage incidentally identified breast lesions, complementing the organization’s existing screening program.
Caring for more patients, not more paperwork
Not wanting to let any patients fall through the cracks, Lifepoint decided to partner with Eon to build an integrated workflow that manages both incidental and routine screening pathways in a single platform.
With Eon Breast, which combines condition-specific AI and embedded Breast Care Navigators, the organization was able to combine incidental and screening patients in a unified, patient-centered workflow ensuring timely, consistent follow-up.
That means any finding for every patient no matter how they were identified —through routine screening or incidentally — is routed into a single workflow for the mammography teams to review. This matters because surveys show many hospitals and health systems are already struggling with shortages of mammography staff. In addition, teams often have to juggle multiple, competing priorities including scheduling, exams, patient and provider communications, and documentation — all while ensuring they remain in compliance with strict regulation and requirements for breast imaging. That means increasing the volume of reports that teams have to review either manually or in disparate systems adds to the workflow of already over-burdened teams.
Why managing incidental findings is critical
The results from the 53 facilities that implemented the program between Mar. 2023 and Dec. 2025 validated Lifepoint’s focus on ensuring patients with incidental findings receive appropriate follow-up. The data showed that patients with incidental findings are a clinically critical population.
These findings reinforce a key lesson: screening programs are important, but to ensure everyone gets the care they need, incidentals are vital. When health systems integrate tracking for all patients into one workflow, they don't just streamline care — they redefine what is possible for early detection.
