UNITED STATES: Chlamydia Screening of At-Risk Young Women in Managed Health Care: Characteristics of Top-Performing Primary Care Offices

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

UNITED STATES: Chlamydia Screening of At-Risk Young Women in Managed Health Care: Characteristics of Top-Performing Primary Care Offices

Sexually Transmitted Diseases Vol. 32; No. 6: P. 382-386 (06..05) - Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Midge N. Ray, MSN, RN; Terry Wall, MD, MPH; Linda Casebeer, PhD; Norman Weissman, PhD; Claire Spettell, PhD; Maziar Abdolrasulnia, MPH, MBA; M. Anwarul Huq Mian, MBBS, MPH; Blanche Collins, MHSE; Catarina I. Kiefe, PhD, MD; Jeroan J. Allison, MD, MS

The authors noted that despite effective approaches for managing chlamydial infection, asymptomatic disease remains highly prevalent. The researchers linked administrative data with physician data from the American Medical Association physician survey to identify characteristics of primary care offices associated with best chlamydia screening practices.

Criteria from the National Committee for Quality Assurance provided chlamydia screening rates. The investigators defined top-performing offices as those with rates in the top decile among 978 primary care offices from 26 states.

The authors found that offices screened an average of 16.2 percent of at-risk young women, but top-performing offices screened 42.2 percent. Top-performing offices on average had more black physicians (12.5 percent, 5.1 percent, P=0.001) and were more often located in zip codes with median income less than $30,000 (22.6 percent, 5.5 percent, P=0.001).

"Although chlamydia screening rates are alarmingly low overall, there is substantial variation across offices," the researchers concluded. "Understanding predictors of better office performance may lead to effective interventions to promote screening."
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