Electronically-Delivered Push Notifications Improve Patient Adherence to Preventive Care

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Informatics
• Preventive Medicine

Background:

• Preventive care is crucial for patient health and cost-effectiveness.
• Many patients do not receive recommended health screenings on time.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess an automated system's effectiveness in prompting patients for overdue preventive care.
• The system targeted annual examinations, cervical cancer screening, and diabetes monitoring labs.

Main Methods:

• A quality improvement project developed a population health algorithm and outreach system.
• The system sent email and smartphone notifications to patients overdue for preventive services.
• A matched control group design compared service completion rates in the 4 weeks post-outreach.

Main Results:

• The intervention group showed a 9.0% increase in annual preventive visits compared to controls.
• Cervical cancer screening increased by 3.2% in the intervention group.
• Diabetes monitoring saw significant gains: 5.2% more bloodwork and 20.8% more urine microalbumin tests.

Conclusions:

• Population health outreach using automated reminders improved patient adherence to necessary preventive services.
• Broader deployment of such systems could reduce care gaps and enhance health outcomes for asymptomatic individuals.
• Automated reminders are effective in increasing uptake of essential preventive health screenings.