Evaluating Telehealth and In-Person Appointment Adherence Using Reminder Phone Calls in the Outpatient Psychiatric...

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry
• Healthcare Quality Improvement

Background:

• Missed outpatient psychiatric appointments can lead to patient decompensation and hospitalization.
• Effective strategies are needed to improve appointment adherence in psychiatric care.

Purpose of the Study:

• To implement and evaluate the impact of reminder phone calls on appointment adherence in an outpatient psychiatric setting.

Main Methods:

• A 9-week intervention involved reminder phone calls made by clinic staff to patients the day before scheduled appointments.
• Appointment adherence was compared to the same 9-week period from the previous year to account for seasonal variations.
• Data included 837 total appointments, analyzing no-show rates for both in-person and telehealth visits.

Main Results:

• The overall no-show rate was 16.25%.
• In-person visits had a no-show rate of 21.39%, while telehealth visits had a significantly lower no-show rate of 12.63%.
• Seasonal variations impacted in-person no-show rates year-over-year, but not telehealth no-show rates.

Conclusions:

• Reminder phone calls alone did not significantly improve appointment adherence.
• Telehealth appointments demonstrate higher adherence, potentially mitigating transportation barriers.
• Future interventions should explore flexible scheduling and multi-faceted approaches to address various reasons for missed appointments.