Impact of Automated Calls on Pediatric Patient Attendance in Chile

NCT02442089 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: 00004109
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 263
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

Missed health care appointments present a serious challenge to patient care. Especially in government funded health systems like that of Chile, missed appointments can lead to delayed care, wasted resources, and escalating costs. This private-public-research collaboration seeks to provide a rigorous, practical evaluation of a new patient reminder system, evaluate how health beliefs impact patient attendance, and capture the potential for scaling up this or other health technology systems. Using a mixed-methods approach this study will provide contextualized, triangulated analysis of pediatric patient attendance in Chile.

Conditions

Attendance

Keywords

mHealth; eHealth; Health Systems; Health Technology; No Show; Non-attendance; Chile; Randomized controlled trial; Efficiency, Organizational; Pediatric Hospitals; Global Health; Referral and Consultation; Health Care Systems; Community Health Systems; Health Information Systems; Integrated Health Care Systems; Community Medicine

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (3)

• Intervention impact

  Evaluate whether a patient reminder system, Health Call, can decrease the overall failure to attend appointment rate as a percentage of overall appointments

  9 months

• Key attendance factors

  Examine what demographic or health belief factors are significantly related to appointment attendance as measured by a psychometric questionnaire

  9 months

• Develop new interventions

  Investigate staff and recipient opinions of patient attendance, the Health Call system, and ideas for future interventions to reduce failure to attend as measured through in-depth interviews

  9 months

Study Arms (2)

No Intervention

NO INTERVENTION

The intervention arm subjects will not receive the automated interactive voice reminder before their appointment.

Intervention

EXPERIMENTAL

The intervention arm subjects will receive the automated interactive voice reminder before their appointment.

Behavioral: Health Call

Interventions

Health Call BEHAVIORAL

Health Call is an automated interactive voice reminder system that can contact guardians of patients ahead of their child's appointment, asks then confirms a security question about the patient, then, if the call recipient passes the security screen, provides a reminder about upcoming appointment.

Intervention

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: Up to 18 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64)

You may qualify if:

• Guardian with a phone number (land-line or mobile) who is able to receive and answer voice calls
• Guardian who is willing to take part in the study and complete the consent form
• Guardian who is sufficiently proficient in Spanish so as to complete the questionnaire
• Guardian's patient who has a referral appointment at Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna who is 18 years of age or younger

You may not qualify if:

• Anyone that lives in the same household as an enrolled study participant.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: lead
• Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna: collaborator
• Merlin Telecom: collaborator

Study Sites (1)

Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna

Santiago, Chile

Location

Study Officials

• William Weiss, DrPH, MA

  Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: SINGLE
• Who Masked: INVESTIGATOR
• Purpose: HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: SPONSOR

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: April 6, 2015
• First Posted: May 13, 2015
• Study Start: December 1, 2013
• Primary Completion: January 1, 2016
• Study Completion: June 1, 2016
• Last Updated: June 14, 2016

Record last verified: 2015-05

Locations

CL (1)