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Study: Responses to infectious-disease reports differ

Quality Improvement Monitor, September 1, 2005

Local public health agencies' responses to urgent infectious-disease reports vary substantially across the country, despite federal government guidelines that call for agencies to have 24-hour ability to receive reports and a 30-minute response time, according to a new report published August 30 on the Health Affairs Web site.

The survey of 19 local public health agencies in 18 states-representing all parts of the country, as well as urban and rural regions-showed response times ranging from less than a minute to more than 40 hours for six to 10 test calls placed during daytime, nighttime, and weekend hours, according to David Dausey, an associate policy researcher at RAND Corporation in Pittsburgh, and two colleagues.

The goal of the calls was to reach an "action officer," a public health official responsible for responding to urgent case reports.

The average response time was 55 minutes, researchers found. Eight of the 19 agencies returned all calls within 30 minutes, a response time that meets guidelines set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The longest average response times were at the end of a workday (99 minutes), during the evening (61 minutes), and on weekends (102 minutes).

Four of the agencies failed to return one or more of the calls.

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