Use of SMS text messaging to improve attendance

Podiatry Arena Use of SMS text messaging to improve attendance

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Use of SMS text messaging to improve attendance

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2nd October 2005, 04:43 PM

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Use of SMS text messaging to improve attendance

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This is in todays Medical Journal of Australia:
Use of SMS text messaging to improve outpatient attendance
MJA 2005; 183 (7): 366-368

Quote:

Objective: To evaluate the effect of appointment reminders sent as short message service (SMS) text messages to patients’ mobile telephones on attendance at outpatient clinics.
Design: Cohort study with historical control.
Setting: Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria.
Patients: Patients who gave a mobile telephone contact number and were scheduled to attend any of five outpatient clinics (dermatology, gastroenterology, general medicine, paediatric dentistry and plastic surgery) in September (trial group) or August (control group), 2004.
Main outcome measures: Failure to attend (FTA) rate compared between the group sent a reminder and those who were not.
Results: 2151 patients were scheduled to attend a clinic in September; 1382 of these (64.2%) gave a mobile telephone contact number and were sent an SMS reminder (trial group). Corresponding numbers in the control group were 2276 scheduled to attend and 1482 (65.1%) who gave a mobile telephone number. The FTA rate for individual clinics was 12%–16% for the trial group, and 19%–39% for the control group. Overall FTA rate was significantly lower in the trial group than in the control group (14.2% v 23.4%; P < 0.001).
Conclusions: The observed reduction in failure to attend rate was in line with that found using traditional reminder methods. The ease with which large numbers of messages can be customised and sent by SMS text messaging, along with its availability and comparatively low cost, suggest it may be a suitable means of improving patient attendance.

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2nd October 2005, 07:21 PM

Stuart Blyth Stuart Blyth is offline

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Hello all

We have been using SMS reminders for about a year now and its been great. Our practice Management software, Front Desk 2005 www.smartsoft.com.au, can be set up to send reminders out automatically every day.

It works with standard letter tags so each one is formatted with the patients name and appointment time and asking them to confirm by return SMS which we then receive via e mail.

A few things to keep in mind though,

•Lots of patients have mobiles but don’t use SMS, so we ask a. Do you have a mobile? and b. do you use SMS?

•Patients can also cancel by return SMS which we don’t like because it robs you of the opportunity of offering them another time on the spot, thus saving the booking.

•It’s faster and cheaper than reception making phone calls

•It's much more efficient than leaving messages that you don’t know if the patient received or not!

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Stuart

22nd February 2006, 04:00 PM

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Podiatry Online have just posted this article:
Can Computer-Generated Appointment Reminder Systems Help Your Practice?

Quote:

Imagine a multi-podiatrist practice that sees 100 patients per day. Each patient visit costs an average of $85. Studies indicate that there are typically two to three no-shows per day. If three patients don't show up each day, at $85 per visit, five days a week, the practices loses $1,275 in revenue each week. The potential yearly loss is $66,300.

It's worth the effort to decrease no-shows. Appointment reminder phone calls can help, but making 100 phone calls a day can tie up a staff member for several hours or longer. There are a number of computer-generated reminder systems on the market that can do the job for you. Are they worth it? .......

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27th March 2006, 04:31 PM

Stuart Blyth Stuart Blyth is offline

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I was visiting the Austin Hospital in Melbourne yesterday and they have large posters up saying that 100 patients per day fail to attend their appointments and asking them to please ring and reschedule.

I'm not sure what the failure rate would be expressed as a percentage of total appointments made but it still sounds like a lot!

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Stuart

27th March 2006, 05:11 PM

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Most hospital med/surg Op clinics have FTA rates of 20%-40%

For Allied Health Clinics it is a bit lower at 10%-20%

The high FTA rate for med/surg OP is due to a number of factors including patients booking at more than one hospital for the same specialty; The problem having resolved due to a 3-6 month wait for appiontment; Elderly people can forget things etc. etc.

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