Managing an extension of screening intervals: Avoiding boom and bust in health care workloads.

ABSTRACT: Extending screening intervals in ongoing cancer screening programmes can lead to challenging year-on-year variations in the number of screening tests. We explored how such variation could be diminished with a managed transition to the extended interval. We defined three extension scenarios: immediate extension for the entire target population; stepped transition by birth cohort; and gradual transition by reducing the number of available screening appointments. These were compared to a situation in which the interval remains unchanged in a demographic model covering a 15-year period. The model was populated with observed parameters from England, a real-world setting recommending cervical screening with 3-year intervals at age 25-49 and 5-year intervals at age 50-64. Informed by typical chan

SUBMITTER: Pesola F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10952902 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature