Reekie D, Devlin H
University Dental Hospital of Manchester.
Br Dent J. 1998 Nov 14;185(9):472-4. doi: 10.1038/sj.bdj.4809840.
To test the effectiveness of different systems of reminding patients about their appointments in order to reduce the rate of failed attendance. The expense in implementing a reminder system for patients was also estimated.
A clinical study in a single-handed dental practice.
Patients were reminded about their appointment using either postal, manual telephone or automated telephone reminders (or all three combined). A control group received no reminders. 500 patient attendances were recorded in each group.
Patients failed to attend for 130 of the 2500 appointments considered in the study. There was a significant reduction in the failed attendance rate from 9.4% (with no reminder) to a minimum of 3% when a reminder was given to the patient before the appointment. However, there was no significant difference among the four reminder test groups, indicating that the form of the reminder made no difference to the failure rate.
Reminding patients using postal or manual telephone techniques is effective at improving attendance. All of the reminder methods, telephone and postal, provided net cost savings rather than additional costs.
测试不同的患者预约提醒系统在降低失约率方面的有效性。同时估算为患者实施提醒系统的费用。
在一家单人牙科诊所进行的临床研究。
使用邮寄、人工电话或自动电话提醒（或三者结合）方式提醒患者预约。对照组不接受提醒。每组记录500例患者就诊情况。
在该研究纳入的2500次预约中，有130例患者未就诊。失约率从9.4%（无提醒）显著降低至预约前对患者进行提醒时的最低3%。然而，四个提醒测试组之间无显著差异，表明提醒方式对失约率没有影响。
使用邮寄或人工电话方式提醒患者可有效提高就诊率。所有提醒方式，包括电话和邮寄，都节省了净成本而非增加成本。
