Many studies have shown a high non-attendance rate in hospital outpatients clinics. We have found a non-attendance rate of 25% in our asthma clinics and would like to investigate whether a reminder phonecall will improve attendance rates. Patients will be randomised into two groups; one group will receive a reminder phone call one week prior to their hospital consultation and the other will be managed in the standard manner (ie no reminder of any sort). The phone calls will be carried out on a Friday afternoon by a respiratory nurse specialist and a research officer for two asthma clinics based on a Wednesday morning and a Thursday afternoon.

Condition	Intervention
Asthma Sleep Apnea Syndromes Tuberculosis COPD	Behavior: Telephone reminder call

Further Study Details: 

Primary Outcomes: Attendance rates at respiratory outpatient clinics
Expected Total Enrollment:  500

Many studies have shown a high non-attendance rate in hospital outpatients clinics. We have found a non-attendance rate of 25% in our asthma clinics and would like to investigate whether a reminder phonecall will improve attendance rates. Patients will be randomised into two groups; one group will receive a reminder phone call one week prior to their hospital consultation and the other will be managed in the standard manner (ie no reminder of any sort). The phone calls will be carried out on a Friday afternoon by a respiratory nurse specialist and a research officer for two asthma clinics based on a Wednesday morning and a Thursday afternoon.

To have an 80% chance of detected a 10% reduction in non-attendance rates (at 5%) 500 patients are required for this study. The rate of non-attendance will be monitored for all the patients in both groups and some demographic information will be recorded for each patient(age, sex, diagnosis and home postcode).

Ages Eligible for Study:  18 Years   -   90 Years,  Genders Eligible for Study:  Both

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

Patients with appointments booked for 2 respiratory outpatient clinics

Exclusion Criteria:

-

United Kingdom
      NHLI Imperial College, London,  W6 8RF,  United Kingdom

Study chairs or principal investigators

Martyn R Partridge, MD FRCP,  Principal Investigator,  Imperial College   

Study ID Numbers:  NHLICX3806
Last Updated:  August 11, 2005
Record first received:  August 11, 2005
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:  NCT00129649
Health Authority: United Kingdom: Research Ethics Committee
ClinicalTrials.gov processed this record on 2005-08-23