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Neighborhood Effects on Missed Appointments in a Large Urban Academic Multispecialty Practice
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Neighborhood Effects on Missed Appointments in a Large Urban Academic Multispecialty Practice

Edgar Y. Chou, Kari Moore, Yuzhe Zhao, Steven Melly, Lily Payvandi and James W. Buehler
Journal of general internal medicine : JGIM, v 37(4), pp 785-792
2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-021-06935-x
PMID: 34159548
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-021-06935-xView
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Maybe Open Access (Publisher Bronze),  Open

Abstract

Internal Medicine Medicine Medicine & Public Health Original Research
Background Missed appointments diminish the continuity and quality of care. Objective To determine whether missing scheduled appointments is associated with characteristics of the populations in places where patients reside. Design Retrospective cross-sectional study using data extracted from electronic health records linked to population descriptors for each patient’s census tract of residence. Patients A total of 58,981 patients ≥18 years of age with 275,682 scheduled appointments during 2014–2015 at a multispecialty outpatient practice. Main Measures We used multinomial generalized linear mixed models to examine associations between the outcomes of scheduled appointments (arrived, canceled, or missed) and selected characteristics of the populations in patients’ census tracts of residence (racial/ethnic segregation based on population composition, levels of poverty, violent crime, and perceived safety and social capital), controlling for patients’ age, gender, type of insurance, and type of clinic service. Key Results Overall, 17.5% of appointments were missed. For appointments among patients residing in census tracts in the highest versus lowest quartile for each population metric, adjusted odds ratios (aORs) for missed appointments were 1.27 (CI 1.19, 1.35) for the rate of violent crime, 1.27 (CI 1.20, 1.34) for the proportion Hispanic, 1.19 (CI 1.12, 1.27) for the proportion living in poverty, 1.13 (CI 1.05, 1.20) for the proportion of the census tract population that was Black, and 1.06 (CI 1.01, 1.11 for perceived neighborhood safety. Conclusions Characteristics of the places where patients reside are associated with missing scheduled appointments, including high levels of racial/ethnic segregation, poverty, and violent crime and low levels of perceived neighborhood safety. As such, targeting efforts to improve access for patients living in such neighborhoods will be particularly important to address underlying social determinants of access to health care.

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16 citations in Web of Science
14 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Health Care Sciences & Services
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