Medical journal article shows reminders help patients stick to the plan |

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07/15
2009

Medical journal article shows reminders help patients stick to the plan

A new study released Tuesday in the August American Journal of Preventive Medicine shows that reminders, including inexpensive automated reminders, substantially increased the number of patients who scheduled appointments and came in for a screening exam. In other words, reminders work.

(TimeTrade’s appointment systems can provide automated reminders of appointments that were already scheduled. This study looks at a related subject – a reminder to make an appointment. This journal article establishes, in a large scale study, what our customers have long said: reminders help.)

I was privileged to interview the study’s lead author, Adrianne Feldstein, MD, MS, an investigator at Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research, about the design and results of the study, which involved 35,000 patients.

Patients were.sent a series of reminders. Each one yielded progressively more response:

First a postcard was mailed, yielding 9.9% response
30 days later an automated phone call brought the total up to 24%
Another 30 days later, a second automated call brought the total up to 36%

Finally, the remaining 64% were given to local teams, who made live phone calls, raising the final response to 46.6%.

The study design didn’t examine cost-effectiveness, but the article cites earlier research in which a mailed reminder with live follow-up call was the most cost-effective. Interestingly (to me), neither study included email reminders – seems like a simple, obvious and inexpensive method to try, so in future research we’d love to see a split test: robocalls vs. emails.

Kaiser Permanente has a well deserved reputation for leadership in its methodologies. Thanks to Dr. Feldstein for her time in the interview.

The press release about the study is here.

Posted by cterry

Filed under: appointment scheduling

Tagged: appointment scheduling, customer service, reminders