Retrospective cohort study of factors impacting client attendance in physical rehabilitation clinics

In an environment of high client demand and provider shortages, missed appointments trouble rehabilitation clinic managers because they reduce the number of appointment slots used to serve clients. The attendance prediction models reviewed require time intensive data collection and many have low predictive power. Rehabilitation administrators need practical models for the prediction of missed appointments so that they can successfully develop and implement intervention strategies. In this retrospective cohort study, client non-attendance is analyzed in the specialty of physical rehabilitation, where multiple appointments may occur in a relatively short period of time. Five types of currently available data were collected from over 4,000 active client charts at three clinic health systems with a total of ten local ambulatory clinic facilities for physical rehabilitation. Multiple regression analysis showed that the four predictors—age group, payment method, proximity to clinic, and attendance history—significantly explain slightly more than a third of client attendance variability.Journal ArticleFinal article publishe