Medical appointment prompts lift attendance

A TRIAL aimed at cutting the number of southern hospital patients who do not attend appointments has been hailed a success.

About 7% of people with medical appointments do not turn up, for a variety of reasons, including delays receiving mail, not receiving phone calls, misadventure or forgetfulness.

School holidays, sickness or family holidays could also play a part in some appointments being missed.

Last month, the SDHB ran a trial aimed at reducing that number, and yesterday’s SDHB commissioner’s meeting will consider a report which claims there is a ‘‘compelling’’ case for the trial to become permanent policy.

The SDHB now sends a letter advising when a patient’s appointment is, then makes followup phone calls, and text reminders.

Last month’s trial had all daysurgical patients over a twoweek period given an additional reminder call just before their expected arrival time.

‘‘At least two patients were captured who would otherwise not have arrived for their surgery on the day,’’ specialist services director Patrick Ng said.

‘‘At average case weights this translates into $12,000 worth of surgery that would not otherwise have gone ahead.’’

The trial placed more demands on administration and nursing workloads, but resulting savings from not having clinicians standing around idle waiting for patients offset that, Mr Ng said.

A further text reminder trial will be staged this month, focused on patients booked for surgery at Dunedin Hospital main operating theatre and the day surgery unit.

‘‘Once we have the outcome of this trial we will make an overall case for outbound calling and text.’’

The SDHB is closer to having its radiology services regain accreditation as the auditing agency is due to visit tomorrow.

In March, International Accreditation New Zealand — a Crown entity to audit laboratories and inspection bodies and certify their competence — withheld accreditation from the SDHB’s radiology service over asbestos, staffing levels, waiting lists and IT systems.

Construction work at the unit was done, IT requirements were worked on, and the service had just recruited to fill staff vacancies, Mr Ng said. Those staff would start in January.

Until then, staff were running evening and weekend shifts.

‘‘This has enabled us to increase MRI performance against the ministry target from 29% (late last year) to current performance of 56%, which is higher than the national average of about 54%,’’ Mr Ng said.

The service was considering buying a new MRI scanner for Southland. A case would be put to commissioners in December.