Enhancing resource utilisation in outpatient clinics: impact of telephone and text reminders on did not attend and short notice cancellation .
HP Priyantha Siriwardana, Frances Kiernan, Abhishek Kapila, Kimberly Ann Cardoso, David Agunede, Mahima Pillai, Russel Emamdee, Sritharan Kadirkamanathan · 2026
Read Enhancing resource utilisation in outpatient clinics: impact of telephone and text reminders on did not attend and short notice cancellation . by HP Priyantha Siriwardana, Frances Kiernan, Abhishek Kapila, Kimberly Ann Cardoso, David Agunede, Mahima Pillai, Russel Emamdee, Sritharan Kadirkamanathan (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13422818.txt.
Description
Siriwardana and colleagues report a 2026 quality improvement project in general surgery outpatient clinics, where missed visits waste scarce slots. At baseline, about twelve in a hundred patients did not attend, leaving clinic use near 83 percent. They studied 1,500 slots across four phases, then added phone and text reminders.
When staff phoned patients before their visit, about eight in ten were reached; most confirmed they would come, and some cancelled early, which freed their slots for others. The authors note that phone reminders work only when enough booking staff exist to act on the answers. One-way text reminders cut missed visits but could push short-notice cancellations up instead. Patients who could not be reached by phone kept missing at high rates. Reminder systems must match staffing, not just send messages.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | HP Priyantha Siriwardana, Frances Kiernan, Abhishek Kapila, Kimberly Ann Cardoso, David Agunede, Mahima Pillai, Russel Emamdee, Sritharan Kadirkamanathan |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 47 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |