Improving attendance in mental health using text message appointment reminders

Background: Missed appointments interfere with treatment progress and affect patient outcomes. Additionally, there is an inefficiency in staff productivity and clinic costs. Purpose: To determine if implementing a text message appointment reminder system will improve patient attendance and clinic cost when compared to phone call reminders at an outpatient mental health clinic. Methods: A prospective cohort trial was implemented to compare attendance rates and cost among patients who receive text message appointment reminders to those who receive phone call reminders at a mental health clinic in Harris County, Texas. Evaluation: The data was cleaned, coded and checked for outliers and shape of distribution. Comparison analysis between the two intervention groups were performed using a student t-test. A total of 350 participants were included in the study. 183 (52.3%) participants chose to receive a text message appointment reminder and 167 (47.7%) chose to receive a phone call reminder. There was a total of 112, 32% (m 0.50, SD 0.50) males and 238, 68% (m 0.5, SD 0.497) females. Bivariate correlations were run on all variables. On average, people who received text message appointment reminders were more likely to attend their appointments (m = .96, SE .015) than those who received phone call appointment reminders (m = .72, SE .035). Demographic data analysis was also performed. Clinical Implications: Improving appointment attendance is critical in a multitude of medical settings; reducing failure to attend rates improves quality of patient care which improves patient outcomes. From a business perspective, text message appointment reminders may result in reducing costs.