Use of telephone and SMS reminders to improve attendance at hospital appointments: a systematic review

Abstract

Patients failing to attend hospital appointments contribute to inefficient use of resources. We conducted a systematic review of studies providing a reminder to patients by phone, short message service (SMS) or automated phone calls. A PubMed search was conducted to identify articles published after 1999, describing studies of non-attendance at hospital appointments. In addition, we searched the references in the included papers. In total, 29 studies were included in the review. Four had two intervention arms which were treated as independent studies, giving a total of 33 estimates. The papers were analysed by two observers independently. A study quality score was developed and used to weight the data. Weighted means of the absolute and the relative changes in non-attendance were calculated. All studies except one reported a benefit from sending reminders to patients prior to their appointment. The synthesis suggests that the weighted mean relative change in non-attendance was 34% of the baseline non-attendance rate. Automated reminders were less effective than manual phone calls (29% vs 39% of baseline value). There appeared to be no difference in non-attendance rate, whether the reminder was sent the day before the appointment or the week before. Cost and savings were not measured formally in any of the papers, but almost half of them included cost estimates. The average cost of using either SMS, automated phone calls or phone calls was €0.41 per reminder. Although formal evidence of cost-effectiveness is lacking, the implication of the review is that all hospitals should consider using automated reminders to reduce non-attendance at appointments.

Self‐reported diabetes self‐management competence and support from healthcare providers in achieving autonomy are negatively associated with diabetes distress in adults with Type 1 diabetes

“…Second, only one third of the potentially eligible sample participated in the study and we were not able to assess socio‐economic differences between participants and non‐participants, which may restrict the study's generalizability. Not unlike tendencies among people with chronic conditions in general 29, the frequency of non‐participation was considerable in the present study population, which is a possible threat to the study's validity. In addition, two out of three participants were female, and women generally report higher levels of diabetes‐related distress than men 30.…”

Appointment reminder systems are effective but not optimal: Results of a systematic review and evidence synthesis employing realist principles

“…Eleven SRs met the inclusion criteria for review 2 (Table 1). [16][17][18][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] These SRs either examined a single technology, eg, an SR of short message service (SMS) reminder systems, 17 or explored the role of information technologies along a patient care pathway, one of which might be appointment reminder systems. 41 The quality of included reviews was variable ( Table 2).…”

“…17,35,39,41 Two reviews did not pass the minimum standard for SRs. 37,38 Of the 31 RCTs that met our inclusion criteria for review 2,4, only ten were uniquely identified by our review. The included RCTs related to the use of systems to remind patients to attend a health-related appointment that had already been scheduled ( Abbreviations: PRiSMA, Preferred Reporting items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses; SRs, systematic reviews; RCTs, randomized controlled trials; Ti, titles; AB, abstracts.…”

The Impact of Mobile Health Interventions on Chronic Disease Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review

“…7,[43][44][45][46][47][48] We decided to include in our review only RCTs, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses of RCTs, and not intervention trials using less rigorous methods, such as quasi-experimental studies or reviews containing nonrandomized studies, because RCTs provide stronger and more unbiased estimations of the impact of interventions. This restriction clearly limited the number of articles eligible for this review as our search criteria returned only nine RCTs with 4,604 participants from developing countries.…”