Service Development: Assessing Non-attendance Rates in Outpatient Clinics

Imperial College London

Status: Completed

Conditions: Sleep Apnea Syndromes; Asthma; Tuberculosis; COPD

Treatments: Behavioral: Telephone reminder call

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00129649

NHLICX3806

Details and patient eligibility

About

Many studies have shown a high non-attendance rate in hospital outpatient clinics. The investigators have found a non-attendance rate of 25% in their asthma clinics and would like to investigate whether a reminder phone call will improve attendance rates. Patients will be randomised into two groups; one group will receive a reminder phone call one week prior to their hospital consultation and the other group will be managed in the standard manner (i.e. no reminder of any sort). The phone calls will be carried out on a Friday afternoon by a respiratory nurse specialist and a research officer for two asthma clinics based on a Wednesday morning and a Thursday afternoon.

Full description

Many studies have shown a high non-attendance rate in hospital outpatient clinics. The investigators have found a non-attendance rate of 25% in their asthma clinics and would like to investigate whether a reminder phone call will improve attendance rates. Patients will be randomised into two groups; one group will receive a reminder phone call one week prior to their hospital consultation and the other group will be managed in the standard manner (i.e. no reminder of any sort). The phone calls will be carried out on a Friday afternoon by a respiratory nurse specialist and a research officer for two asthma clinics based on a Wednesday morning and a Thursday afternoon.

To have an 80% chance of detecting a 10% reduction in non-attendance rates (at 5%) 500 patients are required for this study. The rate of non-attendance will be monitored for all the patients in both groups and some demographic information will be recorded for each patient(age, sex, diagnosis and home postcode).

Enrollment: 504 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 90 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• Patients with appointments booked for 2 respiratory outpatient clinics

Exclusion criteria

Patients likely to only need one appointment

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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504 participants in 2 patient groups

control group

No Intervention group

Description:

This group received usual care and did not receive a telephone reminder

telephone reminder group

Active Comparator group

Description:

This group received a telephone reminder for their clinic appointment

Treatment:

Behavioral: Telephone reminder call