Healthcare Appointment Notification Optimization: A Review of the Current Literature

摘要

Non-attendance at clinic appointments is a barrier to the delivery of effective healthcare. It reduces the efficiency of clinicians and, as a result, indirectly contributes to increased costs to the healthcare system. The losses caused by appointment non-attendance can be estimated in terms of clinician time lost and revenues not collected. However, communication technology has made significant advances in the way people interact and work. Organizations are rapidly increasing their usage of this technology to communicate with their customers. This research focuses on utilizing communication technology within healthcare systems as a means of patient-provider communication by optimizing the current notification system, exploring other forms of technology, and measuring the impact of the communication efficiency and effectiveness. This paper provides a review of the current literature on various methods to improve attendance rates.