Appointment nonadherence is a health behavior that represents a burden to health care systems. On March 1, 2015, a new negative reinforcement intervention involving “service fees” for a visit without appointment was implemented at King Abdullah University Hospital in Jordan. To evaluate the effect of this intervention in improving patient adherence to medical appointment, a retrospective preintervention and postintervention analysis was used, including all patients (n = 65 535) who had scheduled appointments at 39 outpatient clinics. A repeated-measures analysis of variance was first performed. Then, a multivariate linear regression model was used to identify factors that might predict individuals who are likely to attend or miss their appointments and those who have a greater tendency to visit the hospital with or without appointments. Although the average percentage of appointments attended was more than missed preintervention and postintervention, the decrease in percentage of missed appointments was more pronounced postintervention. Also, the average percentage of visits without appointments was less than visits with appointments in both times, but the decrease in the percentage of visits without appointments was more prominent after. The regression analysis revealed that younger, married and male patients were more likely to miss their appointment before and after the intervention. Also, younger patients had a tendency to attend without appointments. Conversely, patients with the lower copayment rate had a tendency to adhere to appointment times. In conclusion, negative reinforcement interventions could improve patient appointment adherence rates. Accordingly, interventions designed that consider evidence and are theory-based are needed to change patient behavior.

The research purposed in this paper is to investigate the impact of the health information technology on hospital performance through the health information quality as mediating variable, as new evidence from the teaching hospitals in the north of Jordan. Research design and methodology approach based on a survey that is conducted to collect the requested data to develop a model connect between the health information technologies, health information quality and hospital performance by using the Structural Equation Modeling approach. The research findings show that there is an intertwined and reciprocal relation between Health Information Technologies (HITs), hospital performance, and health information quality. HITs have direct positive impacts on both hospital performance and health information quality. Health information quality has also a direct impact on hospital performance. Besides, health information quality functioned as a partial mediator between HITs and hospital performance. The study did not examine the factors that influence the relationship between HITs, hospital performance and health information quality. This paper is evidence for the investor in the healthcare sector to invest more in HITs and health information quality, where the expected results are productivity improvement, performance leveraging and error reduction. The research originality is to introduce new evidence support literature form the Middle East countries is the main contribution of this paper.

No abstract