Effectiveness of text message reminders on nonattendance of outpatient clinic appointments in three different specialties: A randomized controlled trial in a Saudi Hospital

ObjectivesNonattendance at outpatient appointment is a major problem particularly in public hospitals that leads to long waiting time and inefficient use of hospital recourses. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of sending short message service (SMS) reminders to the mobile phones of patients scheduled for an outpatient appointment on nonattendance rate.MethodsA randomized controlled trial was conducted at three outpatient clinics (General Medicine (GM), Neurology (Neuro), Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN). Eligible patients were randomly allocated to either receive SMS reminder message of their outpatient appointment (intervention group) or receive no reminder (control group). The electronic database of the hospital was used to collect patient appointment information, mobile phone number, type of clinic and other patient characteristics. The primary outcome measure was nonattendance rate. Chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression were used to compare nonattendance rate between the two groups.ResultsA total of 1499 patients were entered in the two arms of the study between April 2011 and June 2011. These were divided as follows (GM = 502, Neuro = 297, and OB/GYN = 700). The nonattendance rate was significantly lower in the reminder groups compared to the non-reminder groups in the GM and Neuro clinics (26.3% vs. 39.8% and 29.3% vs. 43.9%, respectively P ⩽ 0.02). There was no significant difference in the nonattendance between the reminder and non-reminder groups in OB/GYN clinic (26.6% vs. 27.9%, P = 0.36).ConclusionSMS text message reminders are effective in reducing the nonattendance rate in outpatient clinics though may not be as effective in all specialities.