Description
Cancer has continuously been the 2nd leading cause of death in the United States and is also the leading causes of death worldwide. Despite the prodigious amount of research on new types of cancer, risk factors, and causalities, cancer still exists today and affects many people's lives. No-show is a behavior of failing to keep scheduled appointment and is commonly seen in many hospital settings such as primary care and mental health, including among the chemotherapy patients at Moores Cancer Center, UC San Diego (MCC UCSD) too. When patients fail to cancel scheduled appointments, it affects both the hospital and patient, especially among cancer patients. When they fail to attend scheduled appointments, it can delay better health outcomes and can lower survival rates. No-show behavior is not a commonly studied topic with cancer, so research in this area is still sparse and in the process of growing. In an effort to further expand knowledge of no-show behavior, this study aimed to analyze demographic and clinical characteristics of MCC UCSD's chemotherapy patient's appointments to determine the factors that result a failure to attend scheduled appointments. With a cross-sectional design approach, the study analyzed evidence-based covariates, age, gender, marital status, cancer type, and distance to treatment center, along with other variables, ethnicity, race, payor method, and provided service. The primary outcome of this study was patient attendance at scheduled appointments, defined as no-show (a missed scheduled appointment in the past fiscal year) or show (a scheduled appointment in the past fiscal year that was kept). As hypothesized, driving distance to MCC UCSD was associated with attendance at scheduled appointments (p<.0001) when adjusted for age, gender, race, marital status, payor method, type of service, cancer type, and the interactions of driving distance with gender, race, payor method, and cancer type. Appointments for patients who lived 46-60 miles (within San Diego County) driving distance to the treatment center were the most likely to be no-shows (OR=4.77, 2.54-8.94 95% CI, p<.0001). However, payor method was not associated with attendance at scheduled appointments (p=0.20) when adjusted for age, gender, race, marital status, driving distance, provided service, and cancer type. Further investigation through a prospective study design will allow analysis and collection of additional variables that were not available for this study
