SAN ANTONIO – results from a single-center study showed.
Doug Brunk/MDedge News
Dr. Alvan Nzewuihe
“There are lots of people with sleep problems,” one of the study’s authors, Alvan Nzewuihe, MD, said in an interview at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies. “However, we have to identify these patients to be able to help them. If they don’t come to the sleep clinic [for assessment], we are going nowhere.”
In an effort to better understand determinants of no-show rates among sleep clinics, Dr. Nzewuihe and colleagues performed a 10-month, retrospective chart review of 2,532 patients scheduled at Saint Louis University’s SLUCare Sleep Disorders Center during the months of July and October 2017 and April 2018. A no-show was determined if the patient failed to show up at their scheduled appointment on time or if they canceled their appointment. The researchers used multivariable logistic regression to determine which factors were independently associated with no-show rates.
Dr. Nzewuihe, a sleep medicine physician at the university, reported that the overall no-show rate during the study period was 21.2% and did not change with age, sex, or appointment factors such as time of day, day of week, or season of the year. Significant determinants of no-show rates included being a new patient (39.1% vs. 28.8% among established patients; P less than .0001) and having no health insurance (47.5% vs. public 28.3% vs private 24.2%; P less than .0001). Multivariate logistic regression confirmed the associations. New patients were 1.96 times more likely to not show up to the sleep clinic, compared with established patients, while patients with no health insurance coverage were 1.55 times more likely to not show up, compared with those with public health insurance.
The researchers wrote in their poster abstract, “Patients who are new to the clinic or have no insurance coverage have a higher odds of not showing up to their appointment and delaying their care. Efforts to prioritize high-risk patients of nonadherence will help contribute to better care and outcomes. Further studies are needed to develop methods to decrease no-show rates once high-risk appointments have been identified.”
Dr. Nzewuihe acknowledged certain limitations of the study, including its retrospective design and the fact that other possible contributing factors were not evaluated such as literacy level, employment status, and length of time between appointment booking and appointment date. The study’s first author was Julie Sahrmann, DO. The researchers reported having no financial disclosures.
SOURCE: Sahrmann J et al. Sleep 2019, Abstract 0965.