Use of Mobile Telephone Short Message Service (SMS) As a Reminder: The Effect on Patient Attendance (Report‪)‬

Introduction Non-attendance for hospital outpatient appointments is a major burden on healthcare systems and the estimated financial loss can be high. For example in British National Health Service (NHS) it is of the order of 790 million [pounds sterling]/year [Atun and Mohan, 2005; Geraghty et al., 2008]. Consequently, both clinical and administrative staff are under-utilised and waiting times are prolonged, resulting in a delay in presentation of patients' symptoms and decreased monitoring of long-term chronic conditions, potentially increasing patient morbidity [Murray, 2000; Downer et al., 2006]. Additionally, there are worse clinical outcomes for non-attendees and a loss of continuity of care [Karter et al., 2004].