OC31: Women's satisfaction with the OSCAR (One‐Stop Clinic Assessment of Risk) model of first‐trimester combined screening

Abstract

Objectives: This study evaluated women’s satisfaction with the OSCAR (One-Stop Clinic Assessment of Risk) first-trimester combined screening (FTS) model introduced in Calgary, Canada in March 2006. Methods: The FTS OSCAR model provides pretest counseling, phlebotomy, blood assay for fβ-hCG, PAPP-A (Delfia TM Xpress), nuchal translucency (NT) scan, the FTS risk calculation (Astraia) and post-test counseling during a 90-min appointment. A satisfaction survey was developed to measure expectations and satisfaction with these various components of service. Additional information collected included the women’s demographics, their recall of their screen result (positive or negative) and whether they felt reassured with testing. Between 13 March 2006–2007, all women referred for the 11–13 + 6 week FTS who agreed to complete the survey were included. Results: Response rate was 75% (3763/5013). Overall, 98.1% of the women were either very satisfied or satisfied and 95.6% felt their expectations were met. These results were independent of maternal age, parity and education. Most women were reassured by testing regardless of results (99.3% and 82.1% of the screen-negative and screen-positive (≥1/300 women, respectively). Most (93%) stated that screening early in pregnancy and receiving test results at the same visit (95.6%) was very important. Conclusions: The FTS OSCAR model meets women’s expectations and is associated with a high degree of satisfaction in terms of timing of screening and rapid availability of results. A high proportion of women were reassured by their results regardless of whether they were screen negative or positive. There was also a relatively low uptake of prenatal diagnosis among the screen-positive women (49%). This may imply that women favor the personal risk assessment and benefit from the 1-1 post-counseling of the OSCAR model. Further research is under way to address these questions.