Clinical trial NCT05189080: Twilio Well-Child Visit Pilot Open Trial
Official title: Text Message Follow-up for Patients Who Have Missed Well-Child Visits: Open Trial
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Child Health
Text Messaging
Keywords: child health
well child visits
text messaging
Lead sponsor: Wake Forest University Health Sciences
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2022-01-12
Enrollment: 500
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: NA
Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Intervention model description: The first phase of the study will be an open trial to assess feasibility and acceptability of three different reminder messages, analyze preliminary data, and collect feedback from participants using interviews to identify the top one or two performing messages. Each reminder message will at minimum direct parents/guardians to reschedule by phone or by the patient portal.
Primary purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Brief summary: This project will use Twilio as a platform for a text messaging campaign to implement timely follow up with parents/guardians of children ages 0 to 17 years who have no-showed for WCVs. The first phase of the study will be an open trial to assess feasibility and acceptability of three different reminder messages, analyze preliminary data, and collect feedback from participants using interviews to identify the top one or two performing messages. Each reminder message will at minimum direct parents/guardians to reschedule by phone or by the patient portal. These findings will be used to conduct the second phase of the study, a randomized controlled trial.

Detailed description: Well-Child visits (WCV) are an opportunity to maximize the health and future well-being and development of children. Missed visits, however, can result in negative outcomes for patients and families and for the healthcare system. For patients, missed primary care visits can result in greater Emergency Department (ED) visits and hospitalizations, and in delays in diagnosing a variety of medical conditions, including identification of child abuse and neglect. For healthcare systems, missed visits result in decreased efficiency, lower quality measures, decreased provider productivity, and loss in revenue. Although smart phones are nearly ubiquitous, even among more economically disadvantaged populations, literature to date has reported only on using text messages for pre-visit reminders. There is a tremendous opportunity to study use of text messaging to engage families in follow-up for missed WCV. Even more so, testing the use of text messages with different content is missing, as well as using text messages to invite patients to share reasons for missing the last WCV.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

Patients included in text messaging campaign (caregivers receive text messages):

* Are 0-17 years
* No-showed for a well-child visit scheduled at one of five locations: Pediatrics-Downtown Health Plaza, Family Medicine-Piedmont Plaza, Pediatrics-Winston East, Family Medicine-Peace Haven, or Pediatrics-Clemmons
* Have a phone number on record for a primary caregiver
* With primary language for contact that is English or Spanish

Caregivers must be 18 years or older

Exclusion Criteria:

Patients who:

* Are 18+ years old
* No-showed for a different type of visit, or no-showed for a WCV at a different practice location
* Already rescheduled their appointment by the time the sample list was generated
* Have primary language specified that is not English or Spanish.

Caregivers who are under 18 years old

Primary outcomes:
measure: Number of rescheduled well child visits
timeFrame: 6 weeks after no-showed well child visit
measure: Number of completed (rescheduled) well child visits
timeFrame: 6 weeks after no-showed well child visit
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Number of child patient emergency department visits
timeFrame: 6 weeks after no-showed well child visit
measure: Number of child patient hospitalizations
timeFrame: 6 weeks after no-showed well child visit
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Winston-Salem
country: United States
facility: Wake Forest University Health Sciences
state: North Carolina
Study officials:
affiliation: Wake Forest University Health Sciences
name: Katherine Poehling, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: