Assessing patient preferences for delivery of reminders on scheduled visits in a psychiatry ambulatory service.

Reminder systems can improve compliance with care standards, yet reminder delivery parameters and associations with other success factors have not been fully understood. In this study, we assessed patient preferences for reminder delivery in a psychiatry ambulatory service, using both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Results from a survey showed that most patients had a positive attitude to reminders for both scheduled (76%) and missed (89%) visits. Phone call (61%) delivered two days before an appointment (47%) was the most preferred type and time of reminder delivery. Logistic regressions on survey data showed that preferences of reminder delivery parameters were associated with service types and patient populations, which was cross-validated by follow-up interviews with the staff at two study sites. A single-mode reminder delivering method cannot satisfy different types of patients. Intervention designs that involve building a system with a variety of methods customized to patient needs and balanced with administrative simplicity need to be further studied.