Stating Appointment Costs in SMS Reminders Reduces Missed Hospital Appointments: Findings from Two Randomised Controlled Trials

Missed hospital appointments are a major cause of inefficiency worldwide. Healthcare providers are increasingly using Short Message Service reminders to reduce 'Did Not Attend' (DNA) rates. Systematic reviews show that sending such reminders is effective, but there is no evidence on whethe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-09, Vol.10 (9), p.e0137306-e0137306
Main Authors: Hallsworth, Michael, Berry, Dan, Sanders, Michael, Sallis, Anna, King, Dominic, Vlaev, Ivo, Darzi, Ara
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alcohol
Appointments and Schedules
Behavior
Clinical trials
Consent
Cost control
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Costs and Cost Analysis
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
Ethics
Female
Health
Health care
Humans
Intervention
Male
Messages
Middle Aged
Norms
Performance evaluation
Primary care
Randomization
Reminder
Reminder Systems - economics
Short message service
Systematic review
Text Messaging - economics
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Summary:Missed hospital appointments are a major cause of inefficiency worldwide. Healthcare providers are increasingly using Short Message Service reminders to reduce 'Did Not Attend' (DNA) rates. Systematic reviews show that sending such reminders is effective, but there is no evidence on whether their impact is affected by their content. Accordingly, we undertook two randomised controlled trials that tested the impact of rephrasing appointment reminders on DNA rates in the United Kingdom. Participants were outpatients with a valid mobile telephone number and an outpatient appointment between November 2013 and January 2014 (Trial One, 10,111 participants) or March and May 2014 (Trial Two, 9,848 participants). Appointments were randomly allocated to one of four reminder messages, which were issued five days in advance. Message assignment was then compared against appointment outcomes (appointment attendance, DNA, cancellation by patient). In Trial One, a message including the cost of a missed appointment to the health system produced a DNA rate of 8.4%, compared to 11.1% for the existing message (OR 0.74, 95% CI 0.61-0.89, P
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0137306