Degree Conferred Date

1-18-2019

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice

Document Type

Culminating Project Paper

Degree Type

Doctoral

Department

School of Nursing

Project Advisor

Jacqueline Clavo-Hall

Faculty Committee Member

Julian Gallegos

Clinical Mentor

Dustin Nguyen

Abstract

Patient no-show appointments negatively affect healthcare services impacting medical providers, staff, healthcare systems, and patients. No-show appointments are associated with increased health risks to the patient as well as poor provider and staff utilization, productivity, and efficiency. NorthBay’s Urology Clinic in Fairfield, CA has experienced increased no-show rates as high as 22% since 2015 despite its use of automated appointment reminders. The purpose of this project was to educate the staff on the use and implications of a new personal reminder system, as well as evaluate its effect on their attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge to ultimately decrease the rate of no-show appointments. The project used a Quasi-experimental pretest and posttest design and retrospective chart review. Staff participants took part in an educational session of a new personal reminder system and were instructed to personally call patients 24 hours prior to their appointment instead of using the automated system. Data was collected by a pre and post intervention anonymous survey of participants and analyzed using Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test with a Type I error rate of 10%. The survey returned statistically significant changes (p=0.08) in the staff’s attitudes and beliefs in one question and no improvement in knowledge. Six weeks of no-show rates were compared and analyzed using Chi-Square Test with a Type I error rate of 10%. The comparison resulted in a 13.33% to 6.00% statistically significant reduction (p=0.07) in the total no-show rate of two clinic providers. These results reflect the vitality of the clinic staff in reducing no-show appointments. Findings reflect the effectiveness of personal reminder calls which can be used to improve clinic productivity, efficiency, revenue, and more importantly, patient health outcomes.

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