Health plan members who receive preventive health examinations, as opposed to going to a physician only when they are sick, appear more likely to undergo testing for colorectal, breast and prostate cancers, according to a report in the March 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Preventive or periodic health examinationsalso called well visits, health maintenance visits or general medical examinationshave been part of medical practice since at least the middle of the 19th century, according to background information in the article. These examinations generally include a medical history and a physical examination and may also include screening, counseling or immunizations. "The preventive health examination may be an auspicious time to promote cancer screening," the authors write. "The preventive health examination may afford primary care physicians the opportunity to discuss and recommend cancer screening when indicated, and physicians' recommendations have been consistently associated with timely cancer screening."
Joshua J. Fenton, M.D., M.P.H., University of California, Davis, Sacramento, and colleagues assessed the association between preventive health examinations and screening for colorectal, breast or prostate cancer in 64,288 enrollees of a Washington State health plan in 2002 to 2003. This included 39,475 patients eligible for colorectal cancer screening, 31,379 women eligible for breast cancer screening and 28,483 men eligible for prostate cancer screening. The patients were between the ages of 52 and 78, and all visited their primary care physician at least once during the study period.
More than half (52.4 percent) of the patients received a preventive health examination in 2002 or 2003. After the researchers controlled for other factors influencing cancer screening rates, including patient demographic characteristics and historical use of medical care, eligible patients who r
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JAMA and Archives Journals
26-Mar-2007