Automated phone calls and text reminders are just as effective as more traditional methods at addressing CT and MRI no-shows, according to an analysis published Sunday in Academic Radiology.
They’re also less costly and more efficient than the use of call centers or physical mailers to address such “missed care opportunities,” Michigan Medicine experts noted. Comparing the two methods up against one another in their organization, Molly Roseland, MD, and colleagues found similar amounts of missed appointments with both methods.
Researchers see promise in this approach, without the typical headaches of traditional follow-up.
“This lack of difference is potentially important because it implies automated methods could replace more expensive and more time intensive methods without deleterious effect on patient care,” Roseland, with the Ann Arbor-based institution’s department of radiology, and co-authors wrote March 21.
For the study, Michigan Medicine scientists evaluated missed care opportunities—appointment made, but no imaging performed—over a two-month period. During the first 30 days, the team mailed a letter a week before an appointment and a staffer phoned a few days prior. They scrapped those old-school methods in month 2, instead using an automated patient portal prompt one week ahead, followed by a robocall, and day-before text message. Altogether, more than 21,000 exams were included in the analysis, completed in January and February of 2020.
Missed care opportunities—a term Michigan Medicine prefers over “no shows”—occurred about 2.82% of the time using traditional communication versus 2.44% with automation. The latter did not significantly change the proportion of unfulfilled CT visits (2.62% before versus 2.06% after the intervention), nor MRI (3.1% compared to 2.83%).
Roseland and colleagues noted that such reminders target patient forgetfulness. However, further work is needed to address the sociodemographic, financial, environmental and psychological factors contributing to missed imaging.
“Future studies investigating the longitudinal effects of our intervention, and mechanisms for targeting the remaining missed care opportunities that still exist, are needed,” the authors concluded.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.