Quantitative Analysis of the Contributing Factors Affecting Specialty Care No-Show Rates at Brooke Army Medical Center

When Brooke Army Medical Center primary care providers refer their patients for care in one of the specialty care clinics, there is a specific and important medical reason for that follow-on care. There are several serious problems associated with patients that fail to attend their appointments no-show. Some examples include patients health is placed in jeopardy because specialized care is not received liability is increased for BAMC and its providers because they are responsible for managing the patients care access to care is negatively affected because appointment times go un-utilized provider productivity is not maximized and they lose relative value units for the hospital and, unnecessary referrals are sent to the San Antonio hospital network when that workload could be captured at BAMC, saving the government unnecessarily costs. This study analyzed no-show appointments taking place in BAMC specialty care clinics during quarters 3 and 4 in fiscal year 2006. Correlations between no-shows the dependent variable and several other independent variables showed that a patients age, branch of service, beneficiary category, enrollment status, day of the week, type of provider seen, and wait times all demonstrated statistical significance in contributing to no-shows. The study also determined which clinics had the highest and lowest no-show rates. BAMCs average no-show rate was 7.33.