Abstract

The average appointment “no-show” rate is 23% across 105 studies (Dantas et al., 2018). These “no-shows” cost an estimated 150 billion dollars a year to the American healthcare industry (Ruiz-Hernandez et al., 2020). Previous estimates place the cost of one no-show event at a primary office in the range of $125 to $274 (Aysola et al., 2020). These missed appointments not only cause a loss in office revenue, but also harm the patients missing the appointment (Marbouh et al., 2020). Some of the repercussions patients suffer from are longer wait times for appointments, higher Emergency Room (ER) admission rates, and discontinued care processes (Marbouh et al., 2020). Missed appointments also create dissatisfaction in patients, disruption in continuity of healthcare services, and impedes the identification and treatment of diseases (Ullah et al., 2018).

Decreasing “no-shows” is essential to boost revenue, patient satisfaction, and decrease patient harm. When Kumthekar & Johnson (2018) conducted their pilot survey prior to their study the most common reason for missed appointments was that the patient forgot about the appointment. To fix any problem it is essential to find the root cause. Though not all patients are missing their appointments due to forgetting, adding a text or call appointment reminder system to the primary care office will help solve this problem.

With the addition of the appointment reminder system it is to be expected that “no-shows” and missed appointments will decrease. The decrease in “no-shows” will decrease wasted time at the primary care practice. Revenue should improve due to the decrease in abrupt open appointment slots. The increased revenue will be over what is needed to cover the cost of the appointment reminder system.

Date of publication

Spring 4-17-2022

Document Type

MSN Capstone Project

Language

english

Persistent identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10950/3958

Degree

Masters in nursing administration

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