Reframing “No-Show”: Patient-Reported Barriers for Missed Post-Hospital Discharge Primary Care Follow-Up Visits

Post-hospital discharge primary care follow-up may reduce readmissions. Missed appointments without cancellation, "no-show" visits, may cause missed patient care and system inefficiencies. There is limited research on patient perspectives of barriers to successful completion of post-discharge primary care follow-up visits. In a quality improvement process over 6 weeks, care coordinators called adult patients (N = 36) who had a missed post-discharge primary care follow-up visit with a primary care physician in an academic health system. Of 22 (61%) patients reached, categories of patient-reported barriers were: (1) missed communication opportunities (n = 15) (eg, patient did not know visit was scheduled, did not feel the need to see primary care physician, or forgot); (2) access difficulties (n = 7); and (3) family or work-related issues (n = 2). Most patients completed the rescheduled visit. Continued quality improvement efforts to improve post-discharge primary care follow-up should consider reframing "no-show" visits to address communication and access barriers at the health system level.