Feasibility of a tailored intervention to improve preventive care use in women

Background. Women age 50 years and older are in need of multiple preventive health care services. Despite recent improvements in rates of delivery of preventive care services, especially within managed care organizations, sub stantial numbers of women are still being underscreened. Efforts to improve delivery of preventive care services have often focused on one outstanding service despite the fact that patients often are in need of many services. Methods. A total of 893 women age 50 to 55 years were mailed a self-adminis tered survey to identify outstanding preventive health care service needs. Patients in need of three or more outstanding preventive health care servic es were identified from survey respondents to participate in a feasibility study evaluating a tailored, customized intervention called Tic Tac Health. Results. Five-hundred ninety-one women returned the survey (67%), Four-hund red forty-eight (76%) women were in need of one or more preventive health s ervices; 92 (16%) were in need of three or more. Twenty-two patients (24%) completed the Tic Tac Health card. The women who completed the card were si milar to those who did not. Conclusions. Despite documented physician visits, presence of managed care health insurance, and a designated primary care provider, a significant num ber of women are still in need of multiple preventive health services. An i ntervention targeting multiple preventive health services was demonstrated to be both feasible and effective, Further evaluation via a randomized cont rolled trial should be conducted to determine if an intervention like Tic T ac Health would be an effective modality for improving rates of receipt of multiple preventive health care services. (C) 2000 American Health Foundati on and Academic Press.