Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange
Abstract
The purpose of this quality improvement project was to decrease the appointment no-show rate at a mid-western primary care clinic by implementing short message service (SMS) appointment reminders. The project director analyzed the cost of the SMS appointment reminders and patient satisfaction with the intervention via telephone participant opinion surveys. The guiding theoretical framework was Nola Pender’s Health Promotion model (HPM). The subjects involved were the primary care patients who had access to cellular phones with SMS capability. The project assistant received verbal consent to send the SMS appointment reminder for a participant. Then the participant’s cellular phone number was entered in the online SMS appointment reminder program, Call-Em-All.com, which sent the personalized SMS appointment reminder 48 hours prior to scheduled appointment. The project implementation period was February 1 to May 1 of 2017. The comparison time frame was February 1 to May 1 of 2016. The project site’s no-show rate decreased from 15.9% to 4.5% and patient satisfaction regarding the SMS appointment reminder was high. Costs associated with the SMS appointment reminder were minimal compared to the cost of a patient no-show
