Non‐compliance with Occupational Therapy Outpatient Attendance: A Quality Assurance Study

Abstract

Therapists working in the outpatients service of a general hospital observed a problem regarding patient attendance at agreed appointment times. Valuable staff time was “lost” waiting for patients who failed to keep appointments. To develop policies and procedures about management of patient non‐attendance a quality assurance study was conducted. This identified the extent of non‐attendance, the reasons for this and the impact on the department. Of 192 appointments, 25 were non‐attendances. Non‐attendance was found to be a problem which occurred regularly, had an effect on staff job satisfaction and was a considerable financial cost to the department in terms of direct patient service delivery time lost. A number of methodological problems in the study are identified which limit the conclusions which can be drawn. These relate to data collection regarding the total outpatient service population which meant comparisons between attenders and non‐attenders could not be made. On the basis of the information gained from the literature and the study a number of recommendations were made to decrease non‐attendance. These include environmental changes to department waiting areas, the introduction of appointment reminder systems, waiting time policies, appointment negotiation procedures and a new protocol for dealing with non‐attendance in the department.