Abstract
It has been established that high no-show rates of publicly supported health systems in economically depressed areas are largely due to a lack of inexpensive, reliable transportation. The purpose of this paper is to determine the financial feasibility of offering transportation and investigate the net cost savings by reducing no-show rates. The approach starts with a data analysis on 636 patients at the Family Health Center (FHC) in San Antonio, Texas, followed by logistic regression to determine the impact of various transportation factors on cancellations/no-shows and late arrivals. We then investigate the costs savings that could be realised by reducing the no-show rate from 24.3% by up to 60%. Finally, we analyse the expenses that would be incurred should the FHC provide transportation. The full analysis indicates a cost reduction of more than $15,000 per month can be achieved when the no-show rate is reduced by 25% down to 18.2%.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 251-275 |
Number of pages | 25 |
Journal | Health Systems |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2022 |
Keywords
- no-shows
- outpatient clinic
- probability of cancellation
- transportation burden
- vehicle routing
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Information Systems
- Health Policy
- Health Informatics
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Management Science and Operations Research