Providing Mailing Cost Reimbursements: The Effect on Reporting Timeliness of Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Virginia.

Objectives: We investigated the effect of providing mailing cost reimbursements to local health departments on the timeliness of the reporting of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in Virginia.

Methods: The Division of Disease Prevention, Virginia Department of Health, provided mailing cost reimbursements to 31 Virginia health districts from October 2002 to December 2004. The difference (in days) between the diagnosis date (or date the STD paperwork was initiated) and the date the case/STD report was entered into the STD surveillance database was used in a negative binomial regression model against time (as divided into three periods-before, during, and after reimbursement) to estimate the effect of providing mailing cost reimbursements on reporting timeliness.