Interventions to improve the delivery of preventive services in primary care

Objectives. This review was conducted to determine the effectiveness of dif ferent interventions to improve the delivery of preventive services in prim ary care. Methods. MEDLINE searches and manual searches of 21 scientific journals and the Cochrane Effective Professional and Organization of Care of trials wer e used to identify relevant studies. Randomized controlled trials and contr olled before-and-after studies were included if they focused on interventio ns designed to improve preventive activities by primary care clinicians. Tw o researchers independently assessed the quality of the studies and extract ed data for use in constructing descriptive overviews. Results. The 58 studies included comprised 86 comparisons between intervent ion and control groups. Postintervention differences between intervention a nd control groups varied widely within and across categories of interventio ns. Most interventions were found to be effective in some studies, but not effective in other studies. Conclusions. Effective interventions to increase preventive activities in p rimary care are available. Detailed studies are needed to identify factors that influence the effectiveness of different interventions.