Statistical Analysis of Appointment No Show Rates in Primary and Specialty Care Clinics at Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center: DDEAMC A Statistical Analysis

Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center provides healthcare to service members and their family members. Access to healthcare has been brought to the forefront of priorities amongst treatment facilities in the Army Medical Department. Patients failing to attend their scheduled appointments waste valuable healthcare resources, deny other patients needing healthcare access, decrease revenue and productivity for the healthcare organization, and possibly place their health at risk. This study examined attributes of patients and appointments to see if there were factors associated with no-show appointments. Factors examined were patient gender, age, branch of service, enrollment status, and beneficiary status. Appointment factors included time of day, weekday, and season. Descriptive statistics and a binary logistic regression were the statistics used to determine predictive factors of no-shows. This study analyzed 510,123 outpatient appointments from FY 2009. DDEAMCs outpatient no-show rate was 9.1 . The statistically significant factors produced from the binary logistic regression were age, day of the week, branch of service, and beneficiary category. The descriptive statistics helped develop recommendations to decrease no-show appointments.