Clinical effect of computer generated physician reminders in health screening in primary health care--a controlled clinical trial of preventive services among the elderly.

Objectives: To apply and evaluate the effects of a program for computer generated physician reminders, integrated with an electronic patient record (EPR) system, for opportunistic health screening in elderly patients.

Design: A pilot study designed as a 20-month clinical trial with a control group and a 20-month non-intervention follow-up using a computer reminder program that selects patients for screening in five intervention areas (diabetes, hypertension, cobalamin deficiency, hypothyroidism and anaemia).

Setting: Four primary health care (PHC) centres in suburban Stockholm.

Subjects: The intervention was designed for patients 70 years or older from one health care centre who visited a general practitioner (GP) during the first 20-month period. Patients from the three remaining centres served as controls.

Main Outcome Measures: The number of patients who underwent the tests, who had pathological test results, new diagnoses and new pharmacological treatments in both patient groups.

Results: In total, 602 patients underwent screening and 1989 were controls. There was a statistically significant, moderate or marked increase (13-75%) in the number of patients who were tested in all five intervention areas. An increase in pathological test results (1-8%) was found in two areas: hypertension and cobalamin deficiency. There was an increase in the number of patients with the diagnosis of cobalamin deficiency during the study. At follow-up a decrease in new diagnoses for anaemia was found.

Conclusion: The system seems to be associated with a moderate to large increase in laboratory and manual screening tests for both established and new screening areas. The effect on clinical outcomes was found mainly in a not-yet-established screening area (cobalamin deficiency), indicating that the system may be clinically useful when introducing new screening services.