Appointment attendance at a remote rural dental training facility in Australia

Abstract

BackgroundNon-attended appointments have impacts on the operations of dental clinics. These impacts vary from lost productivity, loss of income and loss of clinical teaching hours.MethodsAppointment data were analysed to assess the percentage of completed, failed to attend (FTA) and cancelled appointments at an Australian remote rural student dental clinic training facility. The demographic and time characteristics of FTA and cancelled appointments were analysed using simple and multivariate multinomial regression analysis, to inform interventions that may be necessary.ResultsOver the 2-year study period a total of 3,042 appointments were made. The percentage of FTA was 21.3% (N = 648) and cancelled appointments 13.7% (N = 418). The odds of an FTA were in excess of 4 times higher in patients aged 19–25 years (OR = 4.1; 95% CI = 2.3-7.3) and 26–35 years (OR = 4.4; 95% CI = 2.5-7.9) compared to patients 65 years and older. The odds of an FTA was 2.3 (95% CI = 1.8-3.1) times higher in public patients compared to private patients. The odds of a cancellation was 1.7 (95% CI = 1.1-2.6) times higher on a Friday compared to a Monday and 1.8 (95% CI = 1.1-2.9) times higher on the last appointment of the day compared to the first appointment. For cancelled appointments, 71.3% were cancelled on the day of the appointment and 16.6% on the day before.ConclusionsNon-attended appointments (FTA or cancelled) were common at this remote rural dental clinic training facility. Efforts to reduce these need to be implemented; including telephonic reminders, educating the community on the importance of attending their appointments, block booking school children and double booking or arranging alternative activities for the students at times when non-attendance is common.

An Investigation into Patient Non‐Attendance and Use of a Short‐Message Reminder System at a University Dental Clinic

“…32 Some signiicant associations were found in our study between particular appointment booking times and non-attendance indicators, in contrast to other studies that reported no signiicant differences in attendance rates. 36,38,44 Our study's indings showed that appointments booked in the 5:30 to 7:00 pm time frame had the largest proportion of FTA appointments. This higher number could be due to family commitments, transportation dificulties, and/ or tiredness at that time.…”

“…This statistically signiicant difference is consistent with the majority of studies that have also found younger patients to be more likely to not attend appointments. 10,24,36,38,[41][42][43] The strong evidence of non-attendance among younger patients suggests that speciic strategies to improve patient attendance for this group need to be implemented. Improvement may require more than an SMS reminder, such as a telephone call more than 24 hours in advance of the appointment followed up with the SMS reminder 24 hours in advance of the appointment.…”

“…24,35 Demographic factors associated with non-attendance of appointments at a rural student dental clinic training facility included gender, age, patient status (private or public), and day/time of appointment. 36 A suggested method to improve attendance rates has been the use of an appointment reminder service sent through postal mail, a short message service (SMS), or telephone calls. 5,23,37,38 Health care practices using these services have reported improved attendance rates for both medical and dental appointments.…”

Prevalence and determinants of dental caries in a sample of schoolchildren of Sátão, Portugal

“…It may reflect worse oral health behaviors and less frequent appointments to the dentist, resulting in an increased risk of dental caries. [21][22][23] In a previous study, it was possible to determine the relationship between socio-economic status and a higher risk of developing oral pathology with painful symptomatology. 24 When analyzing the variable "appointments to the dentist", we found out that the children who reported not having visited a dentist, in the last twelve months, had a higher prevalence of dental caries and reflected a higher value of dmft and DMFT.…”

The effectiveness of SMS Reminders and the impact of patient characteristics on missed appointments in a public dental outpatient clinic

“…In addition to the studies listed in the table, other studies analysing patient demographics of Gender and Age (irrespective of a reminder intervention) show an association between these demographic characteristics and general non-attendance (Cashman et al 2004;Perron et al 2010). Other characteristics mentioned in the non-attendance literature include associations with Socio-economic group (Cashman et al 2004;Lalloo & McDonald 2010;McInnes et al 2014) and Asylum seeker status (Perron et al 2010).…”