Interventions to increase access to STI services: a study of England's 'high-impact changes' across three central London clinics

Sexually Transmitted Infections
A S Menon-JohanssonA K Sullivan

Abstract

Increasing access to sexual health services is a key objective for the Department of Health in England and Wales. In 2006 it published 10 high-impact changes (HICs) designed to enhance 48 h access to genitourinary medicine services. However, there is limited evidence on the effectiveness of the proposed interventions. To evaluate the implementation of five HICs in three sexual health clinics over 4 years. These HICs included a text message results service, nurse-delivered asymptomatic service, clinic refurbishment, a centralised booking service and an electronic appointment system. The effect of HICs was evaluated by measuring clinical activity, number of sexual health screens performed, and patients seen within 48 h. These data were obtained from the clinic database, mandatory reports and Health Protection Agency waiting time surveys, respectively. The median number of new patients seen per month increased from 3635 to 4263 following the implementation of the five HICs. The follow-up/new patient ratio fell from 0.67 to 0.21 during the study. The biggest fall corresponded to a rise in patients receiving results by text message, from 0% to 40%. Only the centralised booking service was associated with a significant increase in th...Continue Reading

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