Printed educational messages aimed at family practitioners fail to increase retinal screening among their patients with diabetes: a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial [ISRCTN72772651]

Table 3 Physician characteristics, by intervention group

	Intervention group with number of physicians
	Informed only	Insert	Outsert	Outsert + Patient Reminder	Insert + Outsert	Insert + Outsert + Patient reminder	All	P-value^‡
	N = 1282	N = 1273	N = 623	N = 629	N = 620	N = 621	N = 5048
Number of patient visits	55,961	53,748	26,379	27,392	26,061	26,912	216,453
Gender (% male)	77.2	77.5	74.8	77.0	77.6	74.4	76.6	0.55
Place of training (%)								0.77
Canada	76.4	76.8	76.6	77.0	78.1	77.9	77.0	0.77
Solo practice (%)	68.4	68.7	68.1	70.3	73.4	69.9	69.5	0.27
Rural* (%)	11.9	12.3	12.5	12.1	11.8	12.9	12.2	0.99
Years since graduation: mean (std)	26.9 (10.5)	26.5 (10.2)	26.0 (10.5)	26.3 (10.3)	26.8 (10.1)	26.4 (9.9)	26.5 (10.3)	0.62

^‡P-value testing the null hypothesis that there was no difference among the intervention groups. The proportion of patients receiving an eye exam was compared using GEE.
*A practice area was designated as rural if it was located in a geographic region with a population smaller than 10,000.

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