Improving no show rates in a GI Endoscopy outpatient lab

No show rates in outpatient health care settings can negatively impact patient outcomes as well as physician and nursing practice. Many procedural areas face an average no show rate between 14%-16% annually. Insufficient procedure preparation, socioeconomical issues including lack of transportation, illness on the day of the day of the procedure, and lack of educational awareness surrounding the importance of needing the procedure have been linked to patient’s canceling scheduled procedures. High no show rates contribute to significant financial losses as well as unused resources for procedural departments. The negative impact of these losses can create issues with staff department productivity and impact other patients due to delayed procedure times. The purpose of this project was to implement a verbal pre-call assessment by the RN schedulers on patients scheduled for endoscopy procedures. The pre-call assessment included pre-procedural education, review and confirmation of required appointment resources in order to minimize barriers. The pre-call assessment afforded the patients the opportunity to cancel procedures far enough in advance to allow another patient to be scheduled in their spot, reducing financial loss and maintaining department productivity. Since the projects implementation in July 2021, 6,625 patients have completed the pre-assessment form resulting in a 1-2% decrease in cancelation rates. Pre project implementation cancelation/no-show rate was 15% to 18% with a post project implementation of 13%-14%. Limitations of this project included challenges related to the pandemic which created unforeseen cancelations due to a mandatory decrease in elective surgeries and cancelations related to symptomatic COVID patients with minimal lead time. This project has created a sustainable practice while improving no show and cancelation rates