Although disease reporting by physicians is an essential component of public health surveillance, the extent of physician participation in reporting specific diseases is not routinely assessed. As part of an evaluation of Lyme disease (LD) surveillance, the Connecticut Department of Health Services (CDHS) conducted a study to determine the number and specialty of Connecticut physicians who reported LD cases in 1991 and/or 1992. This report summarizes the results of this study.
To characterize physician reporting of LD, the CDHS expanded the LD surveillance database to include the names, towns, and license numbers of 4570 licensed physicians from four primary-care specialties: internal medicine (2520), general/family practice (1096), pediatrics (839), and dermatology (115). This primary-care physician group was a subset of the 9185 physicians (excluding physicians in residency programs) licensed by the CDHS as of January 30, 1992. If LD was reported by a physician not on the primary-care physician list, the name was checked against the complete list of licensed physicians.