Five-year routine cervical cancer screening rates and intervals in a US health plan

ABSTRACTObjective: Cervical cancerscreening with liquid-based cytologyor concurrent HPV screening may decrease positive predictive value and specificity of screening results. Following changes to leading guidelines for cervical cancerscreening, policy-makers may benefit from more detailed statistics to improve management of routine screening intervals. This paper reports annual cervical cancerscreening rates, intervals between routine screenings, population cost burden of routine screening, and concurrent HPV screening rates in the medical claims database of a large US health plan between 2000 and 2004.Research design and methods: Annual cervical cancerscreening rates were reported for each calendar year between 2000 and 2004, plus intervals between routine screenings in a cohort enrolled for 5 years after a first routine screening. Interval estimatesaccounted for women not screened in the first year of the study period. Overall screening rates and intervals were adjusted to the US civilian female p...