Can Text Messages Improve Attendance to Primary Care Appointments in Underserved Populations?

• Published in: Journal of health care for the poor and underserved Vol. 27; no. 4; pp. 1709 - 1725
• Main Authors: Percac-Lima, Sanja, Singer, Daniel E, Cronin, Patrick R, Chang, Yuchiao, Zai, Adrian H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Johns Hopkins University Press 01.11.2016
• Subjects: Adult; Appointments and Schedules; Attendance; Automation; Case-Control Studies; Clinical trials; Community health services; Consent; Health care; Health services; Humans; Informed consent; Intervention; Low income groups; Medical records; Medicine; Mobile phones; Patients; Physicians; Primary care; Primary Health Care; Quality; Reminder effects; Reminder Systems; Reminders; Research centers; Short message service; Studies; Text Messaging; Underserved populations; Vulnerable Populations; United States > US; Massachusetts
• ISSN: 1049-2089; 1548-6869; 1548-6869
• DOI: 10.1353/hpu.2016.0157

We explored whether text message (TM) reminders could be used at a community health center (CHC) to improve primary care appointment attendance in adult patients. Over six months, we allocated 8,425 appointments to intervention and 2,679 to control. The proportion of no-shows in the intervention was 18.0% vs. 19.8% in control (p = .106). Among intervention appointments, 1,431 did not have a cell phone, 4,955 did not respond to the consent TM, and 231 declined TMs. The proportion of no-shows for the 1,309 appointments who received TM was 13.7% compared with 20.2% in a matched control group (p = .001). However, of 81 surveyed patients who did not respond to the consent TM, 64 (93%) wished to receive TMs. In conclusion, patients who received TM demonstrated improved attendance to their appointments. TM might be an effective supplemental appointment reminder method in a subpopulation of CHC patients and it should be explored in future research.