THE COST OF TRACKING A COHORT OF WOMEN IN A GENERAL-PRACTICE USING RUBELLA IMMUNE STATUS AS AN EXAMPLE

Aim. To measure the cost of tracking for rubella immunisation status. Method. A 6 month prospective cohort study tracking all 25 and 26 year old women registered with suburban middle class general practice. Res ults. 357 women were registered as at 12 October 1992. 44% lived more than 3 km from the general practice building and 14% had no contact te lephone. Culling the clinical records gave the general practice inform ation on rubella status for 28% of women. Sending two letters and two telephone calls to the remainder resulted in an increase to 59% of wom en where the general practice had information about rubella status (ch i(2)=71.26, df=1, p<0.001). An inability to contact women was the majo r reason why 143 women did not have their rubella status known by the general practice. Information on rubella status was available in only 20% of women who had not given a contact telephone number to the gener al practice, compared to 67% of women who had given a contact telephon e number (chi(2)=38.38, df=1, p<0.001). Culling records and sending on e letter was the most efficient use of resources. The total cost per w oman screened in this study was $9.94. Conclusion. More general practi ce research is needed to determine all the costs of screening for impo rtant medical conditions.