Background: Screening mammography is recommended for the early detection of breast cancer. The processes for ordering screening mammography often rely on a health care provider order and a scheduler to arrange the time and location of breast imaging. Self-scheduling after automated ordering of screening mammograms may offer a more efficient and convenient way to schedule screening mammograms.
Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the use, outcomes, and efficiency of an automated mammogram ordering and invitation process paired with self-scheduling.
Methods: We examined appointment data from 12 months of scheduled mammogram appointments, starting in September 2019 when a web and mobile app self-scheduling process for screening mammograms was made available for the Mayo Clinic primary care practice. Patients registered to the Mayo Clinic Patient Online Services could view the schedules and book their mammogram appointment via the web or a mobile app. Self-scheduling required no telephone calls or staff appointment schedulers. We examined uptake (count and percentage of patients utilizing self-scheduling), number of appointment actions taken by self-schedulers and by those using staff schedulers, no-show outcomes, scheduling efficiency, and weekend and after-hours use of self-scheduling.
Results: For patients who were registered to patient online services and had screening mammogram appointment activity, 15.3% (14,387/93,901) used the web or mobile app to do either some mammogram self-scheduling or self-cancelling appointment actions. Approximately 24.4% (3285/13,454) of self-scheduling occurred after normal business hours/on weekends. Approximately 9.3% (8736/93,901) of the patients used self-scheduling/cancelling exclusively. For self-scheduled mammograms, there were 5.7% (536/9433) no-shows compared to 4.6% (3590/77,531) no-shows in staff-scheduled mammograms (unadjusted odds ratio 1.24, 95% CI 1.13-1.36; P<.001). The odds ratio of no-shows for self-scheduled mammograms to staff-scheduled mammograms decreased to 1.12 (95% CI 1.02-1.23; P=.02) when adjusted for age, race, and ethnicity. On average, since there were only 0.197 staff-scheduler actions for each finalized self-scheduled appointment, staff schedulers were rarely used to redo or "clean up" self-scheduled appointments. Exclusively self-scheduled appointments were significantly more efficient than staff-scheduled appointments. Self-schedulers experienced a single appointment step process (one and done) for 93.5% (7553/8079) of their finalized appointments; only 74.5% (52,804/70,839) of staff-scheduled finalized appointments had a similar one-step appointment process (P<.001). For staff-scheduled appointments, 25.5% (18,035/70,839) of the finalized appointments took multiple appointment steps. For finalized appointments that were exclusively self-scheduled, only 6.5% (526/8079) took multiple appointment steps. The staff-scheduled to self-scheduled odds ratio of taking multiple steps for a finalized screening mammogram appointment was 4.9 (95% CI 4.48-5.37; P<.001).
Conclusions: Screening mammograms can be efficiently self-scheduled but may be associated with a slight increase in no-shows. Self-scheduling can decrease staff scheduler work and can be convenient for patients who want to manage their appointment scheduling activity after business hours or on weekends.
Keywords: EHR; app; cancer; computer software application; diagnostic; electronic health record; mammogram; mobile applications; office visit; outpatient care; patient appointment; preventive health service; schedule; screening; self-schedule; software tool.
©Frederick North, Elissa M Nelson, Rebecca J Buss, Rebecca J Majerus, Matthew C Thompson, Brian A Crum. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (https://medinform.jmir.org), 07.12.2021.