With regard to OA-specific characteristics, there was not much between-clinic variation in presence of knee OA (≥90% at all clinics), but there was substantial between-clinic variation in diagnosis of hip OA (26%-68%) and diagnosis of both knee and hip OA 23%-61 23%-61
Substantial between-clinic variation is indicative of within-clinic homogeneity or a clustering effect.
With respect to demographic characteristics, there was substantial between-clinic variation in age, gender, race, and income status.
Finally, we also observed substantial between-clinic variation in some of the self-reported OA treatment use variables.
In particular, there was substantial between-clinic variation in patients who reported ever seeing a physical therapist, both for knee and hip OA.
The investigation demonstrated that a substantial amount of clinic personnel time is saved on a daily basis when the EVOTECH ECR is used rather than a reprocessor that requires manual cleaning of endoscopes.
Additionally, our sample size was smaller than anticipated, due in part to substantial numbers of clinic patients being ineligible to participate because of language barriers (non-fluent in English) and cognitive dysfunction, and in part to a relatively low acceptance of study participation.
There were substantial differences across clinics with regard to patients who were eligible based on medical record review; this is illustrated by the proportion of patients who were mailed a recruitment letter after medical record review, which ranged from 10%-31 10%-31
Results After baseline differences between groups were controlled, the "angina clinic" conferred substantial improvement on patient symptom control (3-month benefit in angina frequency +9.4, P <.001; in angina stability +14.7, P <.001), treatment satisfaction (+8.6, P <.001), quality of life (+6.8, P <.001), and physical limitations resulting from coronary disease (+3.6, P =.047).
However, despite new classification criteria for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) [ 3, 4], a substantial proportion of EA clinic attendees have un-classifiable disease, and are labelled as having undifferentiated arthritis (UA) [ 5, 6].
