Missed appointments at a university hospital in eastern saudi arabia: magnitude and association factors.

UNLABELLED: Missed appointment is a common problem in ambulatory settings that has serious clinical and economic impacts. The present study aims at quantifying the burden of missed appointments and revealing the factors associated with it at a teaching hospital in Eastern Saudi Arabia. Two designs were used: a retrospective descriptive design to describe the magnitude of missed appointments during the year 2007, and a case-control design to identify factors associated with missed appointment. The association of socio-demographic, clinical, visit, and other factors with missed appointment was investigated through interviewing 150 cases and 150 controls. Univariate and stepwise multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the statistical significance of investigated factors. The rate of missed appointments at the study hospital in 2007 was 23.72%. Factors found to be associated with missed appointments were city of residence, duration from registration to appointment, reason of the visit and presence of pain at visit time. The main reasons given by patients for no-show were unavailability of transportation means (22.6%) and forgetting the appointment (17.3%). CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The rate of missed appointment was high at the study hospital. Few factors were found to be significantly associated with missed appointments; many of them are not under the control of the hospital. Providing means of transportation and patient reminders can help reduce the problem.