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No-shows in ambulatory clinics and non-utilized appointments for elective operations in selected surgical departments at a tertiary hospital in Israel
BACKGROUND: The phenomenon of a patient missing a medical appointment without notification is called a “no-show”. In contrast, “non-utilized appointments” are a broader phenomenon including all appointments that didn’t occur as registered – whether due to actions taken by providers or patients. Both...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6664577/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31358060 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13584-019-0333-5 |
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author | Cohen-Yatziv, Lior Cohen, Matan Joel Halevy, Jonathan Kaliner, Ehud |
author_facet | Cohen-Yatziv, Lior Cohen, Matan Joel Halevy, Jonathan Kaliner, Ehud |
author_sort | Cohen-Yatziv, Lior |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The phenomenon of a patient missing a medical appointment without notification is called a “no-show”. In contrast, “non-utilized appointments” are a broader phenomenon including all appointments that didn’t occur as registered – whether due to actions taken by providers or patients. Both no-shows and non-utilized appointments can lead to reduced quality of care, loss in productivity, financial losses and impaired patient outcomes. METHODS: The study was carried out between August 2016 and January 2017 in the ENT, Orthopedics and General Surgery Departments of the Jerusalem-based Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The study team sought to examine the reasons for non-utilized appointments in elective operations. The study team also interviewed no-show ambulatory care patients regarding the causes of the no-show and reviewed medical records of no-show patients to determine the nature of the missed appointments. RESULTS: The rate of non-utilization of appointments for elective operations was 6%. The leading reasons for non-utilization of these appointments were: patient health issues, patient surgery postponement and surgery schedule overload (together accounting for 52% of cases and 72% of known reasons). The no-show rate for ambulatory clinic appointments was approximately 15%. The leading reasons for ambulatory clinic no-shows were: administrative issues, illness and forgetfulness (together accounting for 58% of all reasons). The leading types of appointments missed were:post-operation follow-ups and chronic illness follow-up (together accounting for 46% of cases and 63% of known reasons). CONCLUSIONS: In this study, the non-utilized appointment rate for elective operations was found to be lower than those noted in the medical literature, while the no-show rate for ambulatory visits was found to be similar to that found in the literature. There is room to question the necessity of certain types of postoperative follow-up appointments since they are at “high risk” for no-show. One promising way to reduce the no-show rate would involve improving the hospital’s information and computing systems in order to identify patients who are susceptible to a no-show incident. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6664577 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-66645772019-08-05 No-shows in ambulatory clinics and non-utilized appointments for elective operations in selected surgical departments at a tertiary hospital in Israel Cohen-Yatziv, Lior Cohen, Matan Joel Halevy, Jonathan Kaliner, Ehud Isr J Health Policy Res Original Research Article BACKGROUND: The phenomenon of a patient missing a medical appointment without notification is called a “no-show”. In contrast, “non-utilized appointments” are a broader phenomenon including all appointments that didn’t occur as registered – whether due to actions taken by providers or patients. Both no-shows and non-utilized appointments can lead to reduced quality of care, loss in productivity, financial losses and impaired patient outcomes. METHODS: The study was carried out between August 2016 and January 2017 in the ENT, Orthopedics and General Surgery Departments of the Jerusalem-based Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The study team sought to examine the reasons for non-utilized appointments in elective operations. The study team also interviewed no-show ambulatory care patients regarding the causes of the no-show and reviewed medical records of no-show patients to determine the nature of the missed appointments. RESULTS: The rate of non-utilization of appointments for elective operations was 6%. The leading reasons for non-utilization of these appointments were: patient health issues, patient surgery postponement and surgery schedule overload (together accounting for 52% of cases and 72% of known reasons). The no-show rate for ambulatory clinic appointments was approximately 15%. The leading reasons for ambulatory clinic no-shows were: administrative issues, illness and forgetfulness (together accounting for 58% of all reasons). The leading types of appointments missed were:post-operation follow-ups and chronic illness follow-up (together accounting for 46% of cases and 63% of known reasons). CONCLUSIONS: In this study, the non-utilized appointment rate for elective operations was found to be lower than those noted in the medical literature, while the no-show rate for ambulatory visits was found to be similar to that found in the literature. There is room to question the necessity of certain types of postoperative follow-up appointments since they are at “high risk” for no-show. One promising way to reduce the no-show rate would involve improving the hospital’s information and computing systems in order to identify patients who are susceptible to a no-show incident. BioMed Central 2019-07-30 /pmc/articles/PMC6664577/ /pubmed/31358060 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13584-019-0333-5 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Original Research Article Cohen-Yatziv, Lior Cohen, Matan Joel Halevy, Jonathan Kaliner, Ehud No-shows in ambulatory clinics and non-utilized appointments for elective operations in selected surgical departments at a tertiary hospital in Israel |
title | No-shows in ambulatory clinics and non-utilized appointments for elective operations in selected surgical departments at a tertiary hospital in Israel |
title_full | No-shows in ambulatory clinics and non-utilized appointments for elective operations in selected surgical departments at a tertiary hospital in Israel |
title_fullStr | No-shows in ambulatory clinics and non-utilized appointments for elective operations in selected surgical departments at a tertiary hospital in Israel |
title_full_unstemmed | No-shows in ambulatory clinics and non-utilized appointments for elective operations in selected surgical departments at a tertiary hospital in Israel |
title_short | No-shows in ambulatory clinics and non-utilized appointments for elective operations in selected surgical departments at a tertiary hospital in Israel |
title_sort | no-shows in ambulatory clinics and non-utilized appointments for elective operations in selected surgical departments at a tertiary hospital in israel |
topic | Original Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6664577/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31358060 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13584-019-0333-5 |
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