The Healthcare No-show Reduction Method

Abstract

This research presents the method that supports the healthcare sector in reducing the number of no-show patients. The method is applicable for hospitals, clinics or other medical care centers that are willing to reduce their no-show rate, by following these phases: Select dataset, analyze demographic factors, analyze environmental factors, analyze patients’ behaviors and analyze doctors. Based on the gathered knowledge from the prior phases, a plan to reduce the number of no-show patients can be created and suitable interventions can be employed to tackle the no-show patients.

First the patients’ demographic factors, environmental factors and patients’ behavior are examined through literature research. Next, several methods, models, techniques and technologies to mitigate no-show are described. Some of them are well known in the healthcare sector and provide a basis into reducing the number of no-show patients, while the other one are new or related to reduce the number of no-show patients.

The method is evaluated and validated by conducting qualitative semi-structured interviews, utilizing NVIVO. As a result, the method is successfully evaluated and validated on the following criteria: completeness, consistency, efficiency and applicability. By applying the method an appropriate strategy to reduce the number of no-show patients in hospitals, clinics or other medical care centers can be built.

Furthermore, data analysis on a large no-show dataset consisting on average 900 thousand patients has taken place. Moderators have been analyzed between patients’ demographic factors variables and environmental factors variables to no-show. Finally, The method has been tested, based on the data analysis results as a recommendation on how to reduce the number of no-show patients.