Regular dental appointments are pretty important for global or national oral health. Still, some people can not maintain such a habit and sometimes skip the visit due to various circumstances.
However, for some groups of patients, attending an appointment may be more challenging than for others. Medical researchers from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, found out who skipped dental visits the most.
Data was collected from the Dental Center in the Department of Oral and Dental Health in Riyadh, including medical records for 2024 from January 1 to May 1.
What's exciting scientists found?
First, scientists revealed that single people are more likely (56%) to skip dental visits than married ones, and this group accounts for almost 61% of women.
The next important factor is age. The least punctual group of patients is young adults before 25—almost 37% of them are non-attendees. Also, the research showed the tendency—the younger the patients, the more likely they are to miss the appointment.
Additionally, researchers found particular timeframes when people find it hard to attend dental visits. The period between 8 AM and 3 PM is characterized by most missing appointments, compared to the period after 4 PM.
Tuesday has the highest nonattendance rate among other days. However, researchers found that new patients are likelier to miss an appointment on Sunday (86% of non-attendees) and Monday (83%).
Possible Solution
The source contains many other interesting digits that you can use to compare with your own clinic appointment data.
To decrease the number of missing appointments, you should think about reminder messages that will keep your patient posted about upcoming visits.
Recently, we released an automated communicative tool for our web-based software that integrated with WhatsApp.
This smart solution eliminates time-consuming communication via text messages, making this process smooth and simple. Using a special interface, you just need to select the campaign type, and the algorithm will choose the right addressee and provide you with a well-written and polite text message for the chosen patients.
You can try it right now – schedule a demo or purchase a subscription to Remedico software.
