Improving appointment-keeping by patients new to a hospital medical clinic with telephone or mailed reminders.

A randomized trial of telephone and mailed reminders was conducted to assess their effect in reducing the rate of failure to keep appointments among patients new to a general medical clinic. Only 10% of the patients who received a telephone call and 12% of those who received a letter failed to keep their appointments compared with 20% of the control group (p less than 0.05). The most common reason given for failure to keep the appointment was lack of awareness of the appointment. Thus, telephone or mailed reminders can lower the rate of failure to keep appointments and result in greater satisfaction by patients and health care personnel.

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes