Essay Sample on Text Messaging Appointment Reminders To Patients

The non-attendance of patients for appointments has been a major issue of concern, especially for public hospitals. The age group significantly affected by these changes is people between the ages of 30 onwards. Therefore there arises a need to examine effective means through which the hospital staff can remind patients of their appointments so that the trend can be reduced.

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The main reason behind the non-attendance is busy schedules, therefore making the patients with appointments forget about their set appointments, placing their health at risk in the process (Percac-Lima et al., 2016). It is for this reason that hospital systems have been working on effective means through which they can use text message reminders to reduce the non-attendance for appointments.

How Text Message Reminders can Remind Patients of their Appointments

To some extent, the use of text messaging can help in addressing the issue of non-attendance for doctor appointments. First, mobile phones are portable and with the patient at all times, and therefore if text messages are sent, there is a high possibility that the patients will see them and remember to attend their appointments.

Additionally, unlike phone calls, text messages do not necessarily need one to answer them immediately (Schwebel & Larimer, 2018). Therefore even if the recipient is busy, they can still read the messages and remember to attend their appointments. Text message reminders sent periodically and some time before the actual appointments will help the patients to be constantly reminded of the appointments that they are supposed to attend.

It is also through text message reminders that patients can use more features of their mobile phones to remind them of their medical appointments. Since mobile phones have many features of remind users of activities that they are supposed to undertake, they can set alarms to help them remember their appointments.

Depending on the type of reminders and alarms set, a patient can successfully ensure that they have also set their online diaries to include their appointments and therefore enable them to attend their appointments (Krutchfield & Kristler, 2017). Through the use of text message reminders, hospital staff responsible for reminding patients of their appointments can also remind the people living with the patients to remind them of the appointments too, and therefore ensure that if by any chance the patients do not receive or see the texts that they are sent, then the people around them will, and help in reminding them of their appointments.

Challenges that Text Message Reminders Face in their Role

First, the use of text messaging in reminding patients of their appointments may face the challenge of financing to set up the platform. Sending automatically prompted text messages requires heavy IT backing, and setting up a system would require that the facility invest heavily in the program. Given the stringent budgets on which many facilities operate on, the possibility of the programs being allocated the needed finances may be minimal (Palacios-Barahona et al., 2018). Therefore the hospitals may overlook the programs, preferring using the available funds for more pressing issues.

Secondly, the patients may be resistant to the text message reminders for appointments, since some, especially the older ones, have a negative perception towards text messages and view them as informal ways of spreading information. Therefore, some patients may prefer calls as a way of reminding them of the appointments, hence creating backlash on the use of text messaging as reminders.

In some other instances, the patients and the people taking care of them may be too traumatized to use their phones, and therefore the text message reminders may go unnoticed. In cases where the patients are in severe conditions, they may not check their text messages, and the people taking care of them may not also check their phones in case the messages are sent to their phones.

Therefore, some patients may need phone calls as reminders since they are more difficult to ignore compared to text messages (Anthony et al., 2019). Additionally, any issues with the recipients' phones may result in them not getting the reminders, hence creating a situation whereby they may not attend their appointments after all. Any challenges such as loss of phones or the lack of charge in may result in the uselessness of the text message reminders since the patients will not receive the messages after all.

The Theory of Planned Behavior Pertains the Use of Text Messages as Reminders

This theory argues that the beliefs of an individual are directly linked to their chosen course of actions and behaviors. Therefore, attitudes, norms, and behavioral control are the factors that are involved in shaping a person's behaviors, attitudes, perceptions, and decisions (Conner, 2020). Therefore, if an individual believes in something, they are likelier to undertake a course of action that leads to the desired end compared to if they do not believe or support the idea in question, therefore making it hard for them to undertake the course of actions that will lead to the expected end. When an individual believes in something, they will also make attempts to pave the way for the desired outcomes to be achieved, therefore making the process of getting to the desired end smooth and comfortable for the parties involved.

When linking the Theory of Planned Behavior to the use of text message reminders to ensure patients attend their appointments, it is important to analyze the attitudes of the patients and other recipients of the text message reminders towards the subject matter. For example, if the patient and the people taking care of them have a positive attitude towards the treatment that the patient is undergoing, they are likelier to receive the text message reminders positively and attend their appointments as expected.

They will, therefore, ensure that whatever is needed for them to be reminded of the appointments is provided. They will, therefore, give the correct contacts to be reached out to for reminders and give other numbers to be texted in case the first number provided is not reachable. They will also make plans to attend the appointments, such as canceling any activities that they may have planned for that time, and in case the patient is unable to attend the appointments on their own, ensure that the people who will accompany them are available and ready at the expected time.

However, if the patients and their caregivers do not believe or support the treatments that they are going through, then the possibility of creating barriers to the reception of the reminders may be set. They may, therefore, give the wrong contacts, or if they give the correct numbers, they may block or ignore the text messages that come from the hospital's contacts. Therefore, this goes to show that an individual is bound to make preparations that will either support or undermine the achievement of the desired goals, depending on their attitude towards the subject matter.

Attitudes of the people concerned are seen in the preparations that they make towards achieving the goals, with proper planning and preparation showing their support of the activity that is to be undertaken, while the lack of preparation and support for the activities to be undertaken to show the lack of interest in the activities and the desired ends of the processes.

Additionally, if the patients and the caregivers have negative attitudes towards the use of text messages as a way of reminding them of appointments, then it will be difficult to achieve the goal of reducing non-attendance of appointments. Comparatively, if the patients and caregivers have positive attitudes towards the use of text message reminders, then they will make the required preparations to ensure that they will be able to receive the text messages and respond to them accordingly.

Some people view text messages as informal and therefore do not respond or view them, hence making the text message reminders sent to them useless if they are the only way through which the health facilities contact the patients (Flemming et al., 2019). For the patients who do not support the use of text messages as a way of contacting them for appointments, they will set up barriers to the possibility of them being contacted by the hospital, and make it so hard for the facilities, that their ignorance of the texts and the appointments will be viewed and addressed since there will be a target group that will not be addressed by the use of text message.

Literature Review

It is increasingly harder to get people to answer their phones or listen to voicemail messages. Therefore there are increased tendencies and possibilities of the patients forgetting to go for their appointments. Missed appointments mean loss of revenues for the institution, lost time, and the increased possibility of the patient having ill health as a result of continuously missing their appointments, which would have been used to examine their progress and set up appropriate intervention procedures and plans. There is, therefore, a rising need for medical practitioners and the field in general to undertake procedures through which they can ensure that the patient’s health is maintained, they can ensure that unattended appointments by the patients do not disrupt their sources of income.

Automated Text Message Reminders

It is easier to reach people in general through text messages than it is to get them through any other form of communication. Text messages are convenient to the parties involved, and therefore should be considered as the main way through which appointment no-shows can be addressed.

There is a need for an automated system of texting that will enable hospitals to contact their customers at any given time, remind them of their appointments, and the requirements that they are supposed to have fulfilled for the appointments to be effective (Tan et al., 2019). For example, text messages can remind patients not to undertake some specific actions so that they will have the best outcomes from the appointments they are being reminded of. For example, they can be reminded not to eat anything before they go for the interviews so that the best results can be achieved.

For automated text message reminders that produce the best results, it would be important if the hospital invested in an integrated system that captures data of patients from all aspects, from their complications and the medications that they are under, and dates for the next appointments, so that they can be contacted with the automated messages covering all the needed points that the patients need to address, not just the appointment dates. For example, ideal reminders can cover the areas where the appointments are supposed to take place, the physicians who are supposed to attend to the patients, and the requirements for the process to be effective.

Previously, hospitals used Robo-dialers to remind their patients of appointments. While they worked to some extent, there were some cases where they called at inconvenient times, for example, when the patients were at work or asleep and therefore did not deliver the required messages. Some people also reported Robo-dialers as SPAM, and therefore the calls did not get through to them. Therefore, the current systems of text message reminders need to address such issues and also ensure that they offer tailor-made messages that do not communicate effectively to the patients.