March 29, 2002 ATLANTA (AP) -- A three-state study found up to 36 percent of gonorrhea cases and up to 22 percent of chlamydia cases were not reported to public health officials, as required by state law.
The government wants to see improvement in the figures because better, faster reporting of sexually transmitted diseases helps health departments quickly identify and control outbreaks.
Some doctors may be withholding case reports because of concerns about confidentiality and other data may be getting lost in paperwork mixups, say analysts with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which led the study, released Thursday.
"These doctors, they are just busy in their daily work, treating patients," said Guoyu Tao, a CDC health scientist. "They may not have time, or they may just forget."
The CDC conducted the study with managed-care companies in Colorado, Massachusetts and Minnesota, examining gonorrhea and chlamydia cases from 1995 to 1999.
The study found that health departments were notified of 78 percent to 98 percent of chlamydia cases and 64 percent to 80 percent of gonorrhea cases.
There were also wide variations in the amount of time it took for positive test results to get from the lab to public health officials. Some results took less than a week, while others took more than a year.
The lag is important because "by monitoring these trends in disease, health departments can get a better sense of the people that are most in need of STD services," the CDC's Dr. Kathleen Irwin said.
Most states have some type of law requiring the reporting of STDs, though there are variations. In Minnesota, for example, doctors and labs are required to report chlamydia, while Colorado requires reporting only by labs.
Health officials were careful not to cast blame on labs, health plans or doctors. Some cases may get lost in the mail, they said, and others may have had typographical errors.
Some doctors may simply be unaware that the law compels them to report the cases, Irwin said.
Health officials have little historical data to judge whether the reporting is improving.
A 1998 study in North Carolina found reporting of 70 percent for chlamydia and 55 percent for gonorrhea, but that was by private clinicians only. The CDC's study examined reporting through health plans.
At any rate, federal health officials would like to see improvement.
More electronic reporting would make STD data at public health departments more complete. It would also save time lost to paperwork and transmission through the mail -- time especially critical to control STD outbreaks.
The managed-care groups that carried out the study with CDC were Kaiser Permanente Health Plan of Colorado, Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates of Massachusetts and HealthPartners of Minnesota.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
