The National Patient Notification Exercise: How well did local breast screening services cope with the additional...

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Services Research
• Cancer Screening

Background:

• The 2018 Patient Notification Exercise involved re-inviting women for breast screening who may have missed their final appointment.
• Evaluating the impact of such interventions on screening performance is crucial for public health.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the response of English breast screening services to the 2018 Patient Notification Exercise.
• To compare key performance indicators (KPIs) of women re-invited through the exercise versus those routinely invited.

Main Methods:

• A comparative analysis of 9,439 women aged over 70 in the Patient Notification Exercise against 14,824 routinely invited women.
• Key performance indicators including uptake, assessment rates, and cancer detection were compared using chi-squared tests.

Main Results:

• Uptake was lower for the Patient Notification Exercise group (67.3%) compared to routine invitations (70.8%).
• Assessment rates (5.2% vs. 4.4%) and cancer detection rates (1.87% vs. 1.28%) were higher in the re-invited group, though not statistically significant.
• While most services met round-length standards, screen-to-assessment standards were breached in the smallest service.

Conclusions:

• Breast screening services can manage a ~5% increase in demand, with larger, geographically compact services adapting more easily.
• Women re-invited due to delayed invitations did not show increased attendance but required greater assessment capacity.