Using Behavioral Economics to Enhance Appointment Reminders and Reduce Missed Visits
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03850431. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
"No-shows," or missed visits are a persistent problem in all health care systems. They contribute to worsened patient access, longer wait times, and inefficient use limited health care resources. The VA's no-show rate has shown no improvement in years, resulting in a staggering 9 million ambulatory no-shows in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015. Appointment reminders are an essential and proven element to addressing no-shows but major research gaps exist. Behavioral economics (BE) and allied fields offer key insights that are relevant to developing innovation in the field of appointment reminders. Adding "nudges" informed by concepts such as social norms, behavioral intentions, clear instructions, and potential negative consequences to the Veteran and others is a novel but evidence-based way to create enhanced appointment reminders. Seemingly small changes to appointment letters can create measurable shifts in appointment attendance and no-shows. Even more, these behavioral nudges can produce large benefits when taken to scale and compounded across a population. This project will address several aims, including: developing BE-informed messages to incorporate into enhanced appointment reminders; evaluating the effect of several versions of enhanced appointment reminders; and identifying potential barriers and facilitators to widespread implementation of enhanced appointment reminder messages.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT03850431
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 34,516 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Interventions
- Social Norms + Behavioral Instructions Behavioral
- Caring + Consequences for Others + Behavioral Instructions Behavioral
- Caring + Consequences for Self + Behavioral Instructions Behavioral
- Caring + Consequences for Others + Consequences for Self + Social Norms + Behavioral Instructions Behavioral
Behavioral
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 18 Years and older
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepts healthy volunteers
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Dec 16, 2019
- Primary completion
- Oct 13, 2021
- Completion
- Oct 13, 2021
- Last update posted
- Apr 18, 2024
2019 – 2021
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VA Portland Health Care System, Portland, OR | Portland | Oregon | 97239 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03850431, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Apr 18, 2024 · Synced Sep 2, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT03850431 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.