UHB predicts patients who will DNA

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust has developed a predictive Did Not Attend system that identifies in advance the patients most likely to miss their appointment.

The new system, developed in-house at the trust, is built on algorithms that identify the patients due to come into the outpatient’s clinic but are unlikely to keep their appointment.

Factors analysed include having missed an outpatient appointment before, living far away, their age and the speciality of care that they are coming in to.

Daniel Ray, director of informatics and patient information at the trust, tells E-Health Insider in his latest video diary: “The algorithm assigns points to calculate the likelihood of patients who will DNA for whatever reason.

“We’ve then put two individuals in place in our call centre, who are proactively calling people to rebook or confirm dates.”

The trust is also carrying out research by looking at the reasons why patients cannot attend in order to improve its service.

“We’re hoping that by putting this extra step in, rather than just sending texts or letters in the post that we can actively reduce DNAs,” Ray added.

Initial results collected by the trust show that around 11% of patients are completely unaware of their appointments, predominately due to a change in address where the letter has been sent.

Ray added: “The trust is using data and informatics to directly improve the trust’s performance because for so long and in so many organisations data and informatics are used to monitor and report on performance but I’ve not seen many places where it is used to improve performance.”

Ray will be updating EHI on the results of the project in his future video diaries.

Related video diary

Daniel Ray 19.03.2010, ‘Using data to improve operational performance’