Compliance with mammography screening in Israeli women: the impact of a pre-scheduled appointment and of the letter-style.
The objectives of this study were to determine the impact of different personal invitations on screening mammography attendance and to clarify the influence of personal characteristics and health-related attitudes and behaviors on compliance. One thousand and five hundred women, aged 50-74 years, were randomly selected in the city of Haifa. Four letters of invitation were used. Actual mammography performance was validated by a national computerized database. All other data was collected via a telephone interview following the mammography. The overall compliance rate amounted to 45%. The major predictors of compliance were having had a clinical breast examination within the previous year (p = 0.0008), having a health professional recommend routine mammography (p = 0.01) and perceiving mammography as efficient in early detection of breast cancer (p = 0.02). Aggressiveness of message details, or a family physician's or higher authority's signature on the letter had no impact on compliance. A letter of invitation for a routine mammogram at a specific time resulted in an overall rate of compliance 3-fold higher than the baseline. Based on the results of this study. Kupat Holim Clalit decided to implement use of personal invitations for screening mammography to israeli women on a regular basis.
Ore
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L
Department of Community Medicine and Epidemiology, Carnel Medical Center, Haifa, Israel.
Hagoel
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L
Shifroni
G
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Rennert
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G
D000368:Aged; D001071:Appointments and Schedules; D015709:Correspondence as Topic; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D016015:Logistic Models; D008327:Mammography / Q000523:psychology*; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D010349:Patient Compliance / Q000523:psychology*; D017010:Reminder Systems / Q000592:standards*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013997:Time Factors