Wrist Planner & Scheduler, A Novel Appointment Reminder for Homeless Patients

The Burden of Missed Appointments at Homeless Clinics: Clinic no-shows at outpatient clinics result in decreased efficiency, loss of revenue, and a community losses from patients who would have benefited from medical care. Through Hendrickson's research efforts in creating and mailing a survey to 500 homeless clinics across the country this problem was identified. No-shows account for 14-50% of scheduled appointments in outpatient clinics across the country. One location estimates their losses at over $750.00 per day. Efforts are being made to decrease the rate of no-shows with electronic reminder systems like emails and text messages, but the nature of homeless life does not align with these reminder methods. Utah reported no-show rates are between 20-40% in general visits and 50-50% for behavior health visits . Home studies have found disadvantaged people three times more likely to miss appointments. This encouraged our team to look for a way to help this very hard to reach population.