Background: Long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) has long been regarded as highly effective and safe. However, access is limited and lengthy when specialty referrals are required.
Objectives: To integrate LARC services into an urban internal medicine primary care practice to decrease wait time for LARC procedures.
Design/methods: This pre-post with control group study took place at two large urban academic primary care practices (Practices A and B) and included patients ages 18 to 45 years assigned female sex at birth. Pre-implementation baseline data were collected retrospectively from 2019 to 2020 by identifying subjects who requested LARC insertion or removal via their primary care practice and were referred to Obstetrics and Gynecology (Ob/Gyn) for the procedure. Wait time was noted from time of initial request in the medical record to time of procedure. Practice A developed an integrated primary care LARC program in which one of their LARC-trained providers began offering these procedures within their own practice. All other providers within the practice were educated on how to counsel patients about the devices and procedures. Practice B did not have an in-house LARC provider and continued referring patients to Ob/Gyn. Post-implementation data were collected prospectively 2021-2022.
Results: Ninety-one patients in Practice A experienced a significant decrease in wait time (87 vs 21 days, p < 0.001) over the observation period, with a majority undergoing procedures on their first visit with the in-house LARC provider. Wait time for the 54 patients in Practice B remained unchanged (57 vs 47 days, p = .59), often requiring multiple specialty visits.
Conclusion: Integrating LARC services into a primary care internal medicine practice can significantly reduce wait times for these procedures with the potential to contribute to increased reproductive and menstrual autonomy.
Keywords: autonomy; contraception; menstrual health; primary care.