A TEST OF 2 INTERVENTIONS TO IMPROVE COMPLIANCE WITH SCHEDULED MAMMOGRAPHY APPOINTMENTS

Failure to attend scheduled appointments for mammography results in mi ssed opportunities for breast cancer screening. We tested intervention s to decrease mammography appointment failure among women attending th e medicine clinic at a public teaching hospital. Consecutive women wit h mammography orders from October 1992 to November 1993 (970 women und ergoing 1,072 mammograms) were assigned to one of three comparison gro ups: usual care, mailed reminder, and mailed reminder plus nurse couns eling. The appointment failure rates were 25.5% in the usual care grou p, 20.3% in the mailed reminder group, and 19.7% in the special interv ention group (p = .13). We conclude that mailed reminders modestly imp rove mammography appointment keeping by about 5%, and that nurse couns eling has little additional effect.