Clinical trial NCT02442089: Impact of Automated Calls on Pediatric Patient Attendance in Chile
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
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
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
Lead sponsor: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna
name: Merlin Telecom
First posted: 2015-05-13
Enrollment: 263
Sex: ALL
Maximum age (years): 18
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

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.

Detailed 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.

Eligibility criteria: 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.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Intervention impact
timeFrame: 9 months
measure: Key attendance factors
timeFrame: 9 months
measure: Develop new interventions
timeFrame: 9 months
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Santiago
country: Chile
facility: Hospital Luis Calvo Mackenna
Study officials:
affiliation: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
name: William Weiss, DrPH, MA
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: