Abstract
Patient non-attendance can lead to worse health outcomes and longer waiting times. In the English National Health Service, around 7% of patients who are referred by their general practice for a hospital outpatient appointment fail to attend. An electronic booking system (Choose and Book—C&B) for general practices making hospital outpatient appointments was introduced in England in 2005 and by 2009 accounted for 50% of appointments. It was intended, inter alia, to reduce the rate of non-attendance. Using a 2004–2009 panel with 7,900 English general practices, allowing for the relaxation of constraints on patient of hospital, and for the potential endogeneity of use of C&B, we estimate that the introduction of C&B reduced non-attendance by referred patients in 2009 by 72,160 (8.7%).
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | HEC3552 |
| Pages (from-to) | 357-371 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Health Economics |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 4 Aug 2017 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2018 |
Bibliographical note
© 2017, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for detailsKeywords
- gatekeeping
- general practice
- non-attendance
- outpatients
- referrals
