OBJECTIVES: To investigate missed appointments in a South African tertiary hospital. STUDY DESIGN: Prospective, descriptive series with controls. SETTING: The ENT/Oncology clinic at Tygerberg Academic Hospital, South Africa. SUBJECT: 305 patients with a head and neck malignancy who had follow-up appointments over 4 consecutive months between June and September 2006. A control group of 31 patients who attended the clinic was recruited in September 2006. METHOD: Analysis of the clinic attendance statistics to identify patients who missed follow-up appointments followed by a file review and interview of these patients. The results were compared with a control group. OUTCOME MEASURES: 1) Incidence rate of failure to attend follow-up. 2) Causative factors. RESULTS: 51 (17%) booked patients missed their appointments. Non-attenders were most likely to miss their follow-up between 6 and 12 months (17/31) after treatment. No correlations were found between diagnosis, disease stage and missed appointments. Reasons include: transport (19 responses), ill-health (6) and financial constraints (5). State transport was unavailable to almost two-thirds of the responders who cited transport as a problem. CONCLUSIONS: The 17% missed appointment rate is largely due to transport constraints. The commonest time for patients to miss appointments is the 6-12 month follow-up period. The authors seek to identify patients at risk of missed appointments and suggest interventions to decrease this incidence.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Meer et al. (2009) studied this question.