Impact of Automated Calls on Pediatric Patient Attendance in Chile

Attendance Clinical Trial

— Health Call  

Official title:

Health Call: A Randomized Control Trial of Interactive Automated Reminder Calls to Reduce Failure to Attend Rates at an Urban Referral Hospital in Chile

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT02442089
• Other study ID #: 00004109
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• First received: April 6, 2015
• Last updated: June 10, 2016
• Start date: December 2013
• Est. completion date: June 2016

Study information

• Verified date: May 2015
• Source: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Health authority: Chile: Comité de Ética Científico
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial 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.

Description:

The Health Call study is divided into two phases. The first phase is a randomized controlled trial and side-by- side cost-benefit analysis. Enrolled guardians of pediatric patients will complete a questionnaire at the point of referral and then be randomized to intervention, the automated reminder system, or no reminder. The investigators will then monitor attendance status at their subsequent appointment and evaluate whether the appointment reminders affected attendance as well as the cost-benefit ratio of using the reminder system.

The second phase will involve interviewing guardians and healthcare professionals. These interviews have two foci. First, combined with patient, guardian, and/or household data from the randomized trial, these results will be used to develop a more comprehensive understanding of why pediatric patients attend appointments. The second focus is on improving the reminder system and developing new health technology interventions that can increase patient attendance.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 263
• Est. completion date: June 2016
• Est. primary completion date: January 2016
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: Both
• Age group: N/A to 18 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• 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

Exclusion Criteria:

• Guardian or child who do not meet the inclusion criteria

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

Study Design

Allocation: Randomized, Endpoint Classification: Efficacy Study, Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment, Masking: Single Blind (Investigator), Primary Purpose: Health Services Research

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Attendance

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Health Call
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.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
Chile	Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna	Santiago

Sponsors (3)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health	Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna, Merlin Telecom

Country where clinical trial is conducted

Chile, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	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	No
Primary	Key attendance factors	Examine what demographic or health belief factors are significantly related to appointment attendance as measured by a psychometric questionnaire	9 months	No
Primary	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	No