Background: Nonattendance for hospital outpatient appointments is a major burden on healthcare systems and the estimated financial loss can be high. Various reasons for patients not attending have been reported, including the patient/carer forgetting the appointment and confusion over the date and time of the appointment. Various reminder systems have been trialled across a variety of clinical settings. More recently, short message service (SMS) text messaging has emerged as a viable approach for delivering reminders to outpatients at a relatively low cost.
Aims And Objectives: To evaluate the effect of appointment reminders, sent as SMS text messages to patients' mobile telephones, on attendance at outpatient clinics at the ITS Centre for Dental Studies and Research (ITS-CDSR), Muradnagar, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Materials And Methods: The study was conducted at ITS-CDSR in the Departments of Prosthodontics, Endodontics, Orthodontics and Paedodontics. Patients attending these departments for a period of 4 months and those who had provided a contact mobile number were sent an SMS reminder.
Results: In this study, 206 subjects (male, 124; female, 82) participated, 96 (male, 57; female, 39) of whom were in the test group and 110 (male, 67; female, 43) of whom were in the control group. The rate of attendance on time was found to be significantly higher in the test group (79.2%) than in the control group (35.5%).
Conclusion: The study results indicate that sending appointment reminders as text messages to patients is an effective strategy to reduce nonattendance rates.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9374977 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1875-595X.2011.00081.x | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Implementation outcomes of 1-3-7 focus investigation for malaria in a low transmission setting in Southern Province, Zambia: A mixed methods study.
PLOS Glob Public Health
January 2025
Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
Eleven countries have been certified as malaria free since 2016, but none of these are in subSaharan Africa where elimination challenges are unique. The 1-3-7 focus investigation approach is an implementation strategy that requires case reporting, case investigation/classification, and focal classification/response to be completed one, three, and seven days, respectively, after index case diagnosis. Real-time short-messaging-service reports are sent at each step to add accountability and data transparency.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSmart approaches for encouraging the blood donation.
Asian J Transfus Sci
September 2022
Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology, Sardar Bhagwan Singh University, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India.
Blood is a life saver in many emergencies like accidents or for the patients suffering from deadly diseases such as cancer and thalassemia. Conventionally, blood collection is done in five steps, i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScience tells us that portable air filters reduce infection risk. It's time for public health authorities to make this clear.
J Infect Public Health
January 2025
Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, 155 College St., Toronto, Ontario M5T 3M7, Canada; Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering, 35 St. George St, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A4, Canada.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian public health advisors and politicians have shared mixed messages about the utility of portable air filters (PAFs) for mitigating the transmission of airborne infectious diseases. Some public health advisors and decision-makers have also suggested that PAFs are cumbersome or require expert advice. We take this opportunity to review evidence and address myths about PAFs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNatural language processing to evaluate texting conversations between patients and healthcare providers during COVID-19 Home-Based Care in Rwanda at scale.
PLOS Digit Health
January 2025
Rwanda Ministry of Health, Kigali, Rwanda.
Community isolation of patients with communicable infectious diseases limits spread of pathogens but our understanding of isolated patients' needs and challenges is incomplete. Rwanda deployed a digital health service nationally to assist public health clinicians to remotely monitor and support SARS-CoV-2 cases via their mobile phones using daily interactive short message service (SMS) check-ins. We aimed to assess the texting patterns and communicated topics to better understand patient experiences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcceptability of a dapivirine levonorgestrel vaginal ring in two Phase 1 trials (MTN-030/IPM 041 and MTN-044/IPM 053/CCN019): Implications for multipurpose prevention technology development.
PLoS One
January 2025
Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
End-user feedback early in product development is important for optimizing multipurpose prevention technologies for HIV and pregnancy prevention. We evaluated the acceptability of the 90-day dapivirine levonorgestrel ring (DPV-LNG ring) used for 14 days compared to a dapivirine-only ring (DVR-200mg) in MTN-030/IPM 041 (n = 23), and when used for 90 days cyclically or continuously in MTN-044/IPM 053/CCN019 (n = 25). We enrolled healthy, non-pregnant, HIV-negative women aged 18-45 in Pittsburgh, PA and Birmingham, AL (MTN-030 only).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!