Lowering appointment failures in a neighborhood health center

Failure to keep appointments constitutes a barrier to the delivery of continuous care in many comprehensive health care facilities. At a neighborhood health center in Pittsburgh, Pa., 336 appointments were studied to determine whether reminder letters or reminder calls could improve compliance with appointments scheduled more than three weeks in advance. The failure rate in the control group was 38 per cent compared with 10 per cent for the letter reminder group and 9 per cent for the telephone reminder group. The differences in kept, cancelled, and failed rates between letter and telephone groups were not statistically significant (p greater than .05). The kept rate increased with patient's age in all three groups. Complicance was not affected by sex of the patient, length of time that appointment was scheduled in advance, or day of the week. Compliance was greatest among appointments scheduled for chronic illness follow-up and physical examinations, and least among appointments scheduled for "screening."