LETTER

Rapidity of rheumatology consultation for people in an early inflammatory arthritis cohort

D Ehrmann Feldman¹, O Schieir², A J Montcalm³, S Bernatsky⁴, M Baron³, The McGill Early Inflammatory Arthritis Research Group

¹ Université de Montréal, School of Rehabilitation, Montréal, Canada
² McGill University, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Montréal, Canada
³ SMBD Jewish General Hospital, Department of Rheumatology, Montréal, Canada
⁴ McGill University Health Centre, Clinical Epidemiology, Montréal, Canada

Correspondence to:
^{Correspondence to} Dr D Ehrmann Feldman, Université de Montréal, École de réadaptation, Pavillon 7077 du Parc, CP 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3C 3J7; debbie.feldman@umontreal.ca

Accepted 1 March 2009

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who have contact with a rheumatologist have better health outcomes than those who do not.¹ We found that only 27% of newly suspected cases of RA consulted with a rheumatologist.² However, this study was based on physician billing data; quality control of diagnostic coding and absence of severity indicators limit the conclusions. We pursued this issue further with patients who had a confirmed diagnosis and were in an early arthritis cohort. We hypothesised that this group would represent a "best case scenario" where the majority would have consulted a rheumatologist within the 3-month recommended window.³ We also explored factors that may be associated with referral, including patient characteristics such as laboratory results (C-reactive protein (CRP), rheumatoid factor),^{4 5} sociodemographic factors and disease severity,^{2 6 7} and referring physician characteristics.⁸

Data were collected from 252 patients in the McGill Early Inflammatory Arthritis Registry. Patients were eligible if they had . . . [Full text of this article]

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