Description

Breast cancer survivors and women with recent abnormal screening mammograms report that delay from abnormal screening mammogram to definitive diagnosis causes anxiety and productivity loss for women regardless of whether or not the outcome is breast cancer. The goal of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness of community-specific and community-initiated process changes in diagnostic workup with regard to timeliness, client satisfaction, quality of care, and cost, using both qualitative methods. By prospectively collecting mutually agreed upon performance indicators from five community models, we will be able to evaluate the cost effectiveness of the different approaches and individual elements of the process changes. Focus groups, personal interviews, surveys and administrative databases will be used in data collection. A project advisory committee including professional and consumer representation will be formed to assist in the development of the survey instruments, data collection, and interpretation of the findings. The project will provide other interested communities with information on the elements of various models which can be adapted to their own unique situations of response and operational constraints.

Principal Investigator

• Gregory Hislop

Co-Investigators

• A. Coldman
• S. Harris
• J. Jackson
• L. Kan
• I. Olivotto
• S. Thorne
• C. Wright
• J. Vestrup