Text Message Appointment Reminders (TAR)

University of Southern California

Status: Completed

Conditions: Emergencies; Text Messages

Treatments: Other: Text message appointment reminder

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01676337

HS-12-00239

Details and patient eligibility

About

This project proposes administer and evaluate via a randomized controlled trail a text message-based appointment reminder system to promote attendance at clinic appointments after ED discharge.

Full description

Failure to attend scheduled clinic appointments causes inefficiency within the healthcare system, and frequently results in ED visits for non-emergent conditions such as medication refills, ambulatory care sensitive conditions which are potentially preventable with appropriate outpatient management (e.g. foot infections). Many patients seen in the ED report they were unaware of past or future outpatient appointments for which they had been scheduled. These patients are clearly in need of primary care, yet fail to attend 30% of all scheduled outpatient appointments. Patients most often report that they failed to attend scheduled appointments as a result of forgetfulness or confusion regarding dates, times, or locations. National data confirmed by our previous work in the LAC+USC ED demonstrates that > 80% of this population reports using a text-capable mobile device. The investigators believe a system of text message appointment reminders has tremendous potential to facilitate clinic attendance among these patients in desperate need of primary care.

Enrollment: 374 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Age >18
• Able to provide consent and read in English or Spanish
• Have a text message capable mobile phone
• Know how to receive text messages
• Have upcoming scheduled clinic appointments

Exclusion criteria

• Unable to provide written informed consent
• Incarcerated
• Critically ill
• Altered Mental Status

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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374 participants in 2 patient groups

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Patients randomized to the control arm will not receive text message reminder regarding their upcoming appointment.

Text message appointment reminder

Experimental group

Description:

Patients randomized to the intervention arm will receive text message appointment reminders including date, time, and location seven, three and one day prior to their scheduled clinic appointments. All appointment reminders will then be delivered automatically.

Treatment:

Other: Text message appointment reminder