BACKGROUND General practices in England have been encouraged to introduce Advanced Access, but there is no robust evidence that this is associated with improved access in ways that matter to patients. AIM To compare priorities and experiences of patients consulting in practices which do or do not operate Advanced Access. DESIGN OF STUDY Patient questionnaire survey. SETTING Forty-seven pr...

OBJECTIVE A growing strategy to enhancing healthy decision making is to modify behavioral options to an "opt out" (i.e., if you do not want to participate, you must act) as opposed to an "opt in" (i.e., if you want to participate, you must act) default system (Choi, Laibson, Madrian, & Metrick). The current study, however, proposes that this growing trend may not always be strategic and examine...

OBJECTIVE Broken appointments cause adverse outcomes in healthcare systems: They interrupt continuity of care, waste resources, affect workflow, and reduce population-wide access to care. A better understanding of dental appointment-keeping behavior would support efforts toward designing novel interventions aimed at reducing rates of broken appointments. METHODS The authors conducted a concep...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Missed clinic appointments significantly impact continuity of care, resident education, and clinical productivity. This national survey analyzed the awareness of family practice residency clinics regarding their missed appointment rate and the use of reminder systems. METHODS We mailed a questionnaire to all 468 family practice residency programs in the United States...

Appointment scheduling systems are utilized mainly by specialty care clinics to manage access to service providers as well as by hospitals to schedule patient appointments. When attending hospitals in Tanzania, patients experience challenges to see an appropriate specialist doctor because of service interval inconsistency. Timely availability of doctors is critical whenever a patient needs to s...

AIM To attempt to assess demand for access to sexual health services in a community where a "closed" appointment system operates in the local genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinic. SETTING A large GUM clinic serving a provincial city in England. Appointments for new episodes are available only 1 or 2 days ahead. Service user complaints about repeated difficulty in getting through to book a visi...

BACKGROUND The assessment of Quality of Life (QoL) is a Medical goal; it is used in clinical research, medical practice, health-related economic studies and in planning health management measures and strategies. The objective of this project is to develop an informational platform to achieve a patient self-assessment with standardized QoL measuring instruments, through friendly software, easy f...