Objective. To test if appointment reminders blinded to immunization status improve kept-appointment and vaccination coverage rates. Design. Controlled trial. Setting. Pediatric clinic serving a low-income community in New York City. Intervention. Children ages 4 through 18 months (n 5 1273) scheduled sequentially for clinic appointments were systematically assigned to 1 of 4 study groups: contr...

We develop a queueing model for an appointment-based service system that consists of two queues in tandem: the appointment queue followed by the service queue. Customers join the appointment queue when they call for appointments, stay there (not physically) until the appointment time comes, and then leave the appointment queue and may physically join the service queue, and wait there until serv...

BACKGROUND In Cameroon, only two-thirds of children with HIV exposure or infection receive appropriate HIV-directed medical care. Mortality, antiretroviral therapy resistance and suboptimal virological response are strongly related to missed opportunities for treatment, and, more specifically, to skipped scheduled medical appointments. The present trial, MORE CARE (Mobile Reminders for Cameroon...

An outpatient department in which non-urgent patients arrived for consultation faces with the problem of patients’ long waiting time. Lack of an effective appointment is considered as the cause. In this study, a discrete event simulation model was developed to evaluate an appointment system. The developed system considered appointment rule, sequencing rule and environmental factor (priority rul...

BACKGROUND To determine whether the length of time between alcohol-related attendance in the emergency department (ED) and follow-up appointment with an alcohol health worker (AHW) alters attendance rate at the AHW clinic. METHODS We examined paper and computerized records made by AHWs over a 4-year period, collecting data on the length of time between identification of alcohol misuse and the...