Encouraging Attendance at Outpatient Appointments: Can We Do More?
- 1 February 2008
- journal article
- review article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Scottish Medical Journal
- Vol. 53 (1), 9-12
- https://doi.org/10.1258/rsmsmj.53.1.9
Abstract
Background and Aims Non-attendance at new outpatient appointments is a challenge for health services. Patients with treatable morbidity may fail to receive care from which they would benefit, and scarce resources are wasted. Therefore, a literature review was undertaken to assess the effectiveness of appointment reminders as a means of increasing attendance and reducing ‘Did not Attend’ rates at new outpatient appointments. Methods Electronic databases were interrogated using a combination of MeSH terms and truncated keywords. In addition, the reference lists of papers were studied to identify additional relevant material. Results Telephone and postal reminders appear effective, particularly if received within a day of scheduled appointments. Postal reminders offering a reward for attendance, threatening sanctions for non-attendance, and providing information about the clinic appear more effective than standard reminders. No studies assessing the impact of measures including e-mail or text messaging were identified. Many studies were conducted in psychiatric settings outwith the United Kingdom raising issues of generalisability. In addition, no assessment of how initiatives impact on inequalities in service access were found. Conclusions There is scope to increase attendance and reduce non-attendance at outpatient appointments but initiatives should be piloted in conjunction with robust evaluative frameworks.Keywords
This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit:
- A telephone call reminder to improve outpatient attendance in patients referred from the emergency department: a randomised controlled trialAustralian and New Zealand Journal of Medicine, 2000
- Using Telephone Prompts to Improve Initial Attendance at a Community Mental Health CenterPsychiatric Services, 2000
- Improving out-patient attendance using postal appointment remindersPsychiatric Bulletin, 1995
- Audit of elderly people's eye problems and non-attendance at hospital eye serviceBMJ, 1994
- The effectiveness of pretreatment engagement: Stability and reachability of attenders versus nonattenders for community mental health intakesJournal of Community Psychology, 1993
- Improving First Appointment Attendance Rates in Child Psychiatry Outpatient ClinicsJournal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 1990
- Use of a Stated Waiting List Contingency and Reward Opportunity to Increase Appointment Keeping in an Outpatient Pediatric Psychology ClinicJournal of Pediatric Psychology, 1986
- Telephone prompting to increase attendance at a Psychiatric Outpatient ClinicAmerican Journal of Psychiatry, 1983
- Strategies for reducing missed initial appointments in a community mental health centerCommunity Mental Health Journal, 1983
- Reducing missed initial appointments in a community mental health centerJournal of Community Psychology, 1980