The findings have implications for improving the notoriously low return rates among women who test positive for chlamydia and gonorrhea infection. These infections are common and are associated with serious reproductive health sequelae, including an increased risk of pelvic inflammatory disease and ectopic pregnancy, Ms. Howard noted.
Routine retesting within a few months of treatment allows for early identification of reinfection, and for retreatment that can reduce the risk of adverse outcomes.
For more than a decade, national guidelines have recommended retesting of patients with chlamydia or gonorrhea, but retesting rates have remained stubbornly below 50%. Effective strategies for increasing patient retest return rates have been elusive, she noted.
In the year leading up to the InTOUCH study, only 44% of clinic patients overall were retested, and that was found to be a result both of the low (62%) return rate and low (69%) retesting rate among those who did return, she said.
The overall retesting rate improved to nearly 60% during the course of the study.
"So with a very moderate increase in patient return rates and in clinic retesting rates among returning patients, you can see that we cumulatively increased our overall retesting rates by more than 30%," she said, noting that given the consistently low return rates in prior years, this was "a very exciting result."
The current findings suggest that addressing the factors that contribute to low return rates, including lack of information about the importance of returning, forgetting to return, and difficulties getting to the clinic, can lead to significant improvement in return rates, Ms. Howard said.
"Improving is dependent on addressing both patient and clinic level causes. Through a combination of these very feasible interventions, we were able to increase the overall retesting rates by 32%," she said.
The InTOUCH study was funded by a grant from the Office of Population Affairs as a Title X Service Delivery Improvement Research Project. Ms. Howard reported having no other disclosures.