Reducing Disparities in No Show Rates Using Predictive Model-Driven Live Appointment Reminders for At-Risk Patients: a Randomized Controlled Quality Improvement Initiative

Background Appointment no shows are prevalent in safety-net healthcare systems. The efficacy and equitability of using predictive algorithms to selectively add resource-intensive live telephone outreach to standard automated reminders in such a setting is not known. Objective To determine if adding risk-driven telephone outreach to standard automated reminders can improve in-person primary care internal medicine clinic no show rates without worsening racial and ethnic show-rate disparities. Design Randomized controlled quality improvement initiative. Participants Adult patients with an in-person appointment at a primary care internal medicine clinic in a safety-net healthcare system from 1/1/2022 to 8/24/2022. Interventions A random forest model that leveraged electronic health record data to predict appointment no show risk was internally trained and validated to ensure fair performance. Schedulers leveraged the model to place reminder calls to patients in the augmented care arm who had a predicted no show rate of 15% or higher. Maine Measures The primary outcome was no show rate stratified by race and ethnicity. Key Results There were 5840 appointments with a predicted no show rate of 15% or higher. A total of 2858 had been randomized to the augmented care group and 2982 randomized to standard care. The augmented care group had a significantly lower no show rate than the standard care group (33% vs 36%, p < 0.01). There was a significant reduction in no show rates for Black patients (36% vs 42% respectively, p < 0.001) not reflected in white, non-Hispanic patients. Conclusions In this randomized controlled quality improvement initiative, adding model-driven telephone outreach to standard automated reminders was associated with a significant reduction of in-person no show rates in a diverse primary care clinic. The initiative reduced no show disparities by predominantly improving access for Black patients.