OBJECTIVES A service evaluation project on the reasons why children do not attend their outpatient appointments. DESIGN Analysis of paediatric clinic lists over two consecutive days. Parents of the non-attenders were identified and their reasons for not attending the appointment were elicited using a survey. SETTING The appointments were scheduled to take place in the Paediatric department ...

BACKGROUND Following HIV-1 acquisition, many individuals develop an acute retroviral syndrome and a majority seek care. Available antibody testing cannot detect an acute HIV infection, but repeat testing after 2-4 weeks may detect seroconversion. We assessed the effect of appointment reminders on attendance for repeat HIV testing. METHODS We enrolled, in a randomized controlled trial, 18-29 y...

Fundamental to optimal diabetes management is good patient self-care and regular follow-up with health professionals. Missed appointment may disrupt the continuity of diabetes care, thereby interfering with regular preventive screening and timely intervention.1 It may also affect care for other patients due to interference with scheduling, poor use of resources and negative impact on doctor-pat...

In today’s open Medicine, steven Lewis brings forth provocative commentary on the appointment of Dr. Bernard Prigent, vice-president of medical affairs for Pfizer Canada, to the governing council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). He outlines a number of arguments against the appointment that centre around conflict of interest, and places a spotlight on the diverging agendas ...

Patient no-shows for scheduled primary care appointments are common. Unused appointment slots reduce patient quality of care, access to services and provider productivity while increasing loss to follow-up and medical costs. This paper describes patterns of no-show variation by patient age, gender, appointment age, and type of appointment request for six individual service lines in the United S...

A 42-year-old male patient complaint with missing right eye was referred to the Department of Prosthodontics and Crown and Bridge. This patient was seeking artificial eye replacement. On careful clinical examination, a defect with a shrunken orbit and intact tissue bed was found in the patient. As the patient was economically very poor, modified stock ocular prosthesis was advised. To rehabilit...

BACKGROUND What is the best way to schedule follow-up appointments? The most popular model requires the patient to negotiate a follow-up appointment time on leaving the office. This process accounts for the majority of follow-up patient scheduling. There are circumstances when this immediate appointment arrangement is not possible, however. The two common processes used to contact patients for ...

Appointment nonadherence is a health behavior that represents a burden to health care systems. On March 1, 2015, a new negative reinforcement intervention involving "service fees" for a visit without appointment was implemented at King Abdullah University Hospital in Jordan. To evaluate the effect of this intervention in improving patient adherence to medical appointment, a retrospective preint...

Hybrid materials are a recent addition to the dental armamentarium for computer-assisted design/ computer-assisted manufacturing (CAD/CAM)-based restorative dentistry. They are intended to provide dentists with the capability of restoring single teeth in one appointment with a material that emulates the structure and physical properties of natural teeth. This article aims to provide an overview...

Appearance of a thyroid nodule has become a daily occurrence in clinical practice. Adequate thyroid nodule assessment requires several diagnostic tests and multiple medical appointments, which results in a substantial delay in diagnosis. Implementation of a high-resolution thyroid nodule clinic largely avoids these drawbacks by condensing in a single appointment all tests required for adequate ...