Using Nudges to Reduce Missed Appointments in Primary Care and Mental Health: a Pragmatic Trial.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Missed appointments ("no-shows") are a persistent and costly problem in healthcare. Appointment reminders are widely used but usually do not include messages specifically designed to nudge patients to attend appointments.

Objective

To determine the effect of incorporating nudges into appointment reminder letters on measures of appointment attendance.

Design

Cluster randomized controlled pragmatic trial.

Patients

There were 27,540 patients with 49,598 primary care appointments, and 9420 patients with 38,945 mental health appointments, between October 15, 2020, and October 14, 2021, at one VA medical center and its satellite clinics that were eligible for analysis.

Interventions

Primary care (n = 231) and mental health (n = 215) providers were r

SUBMITTER: Teo AR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10356735 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature