Reducing No Show rate in a tertiary care Hospitals Research Paper

Reducing No Show rate in a tertiary care Hospitals - Research Paper Example The research was undertaken by the use of a telephone interview, and found the reasons for no-shows among patients in different hospitals namely specialized women and children’s’ hospitals and the main hospitals The purpose of this research work is to come up with ways of reducing the rates at which patients fail to show up at hospitals for booked appointments with physicians. This paper shall look into the reasons why no-show rates are high. In addition to that, this paper shall investigate the methods of managing and reducing the no-show figures, so that the rate at which patients fail to show up for appointments can be kept low. This will be done with the aim of improving the quality of medical services provided and increasing the satisfaction of patients. The method preferred for the research work is the Six Sigma method. This method seeks to achieve an improvement in process output quality by pinpointing and getting rid of the factors that cause defects. In addition to that, the Six Sigma helps minimize viability in the processes of business. The no-show rate was calculated using the following formula: The statistics collected over the month of December 2012 indicated that the average percentage of outpatients who did not show up for consultation in hospitals was at 31%. When segmented, the rate of no-shows stood at 19.58% in the women- specialized hospital, 35.71% for the rehabilitation hospital, 30.7 % for the children-specialized hospital and 37.15 for the outpatients at the main hospital. The rates of no-shows in hospitals are very high, especially in the main and rehabilitation hospitals. The effects of no-shows on a hospital will continue to be felt for as long as there are no measures put in place to curb the rate at which patients fail to present themselves at the hospitals for their pre-booked appointments (Johnson, Mold &