Barriers to and Facilitators of Automated Patient Self-scheduling for Health Care Organizations: Scoping Review (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Appointment management in the outpatient setting is important for health care organizations as waits and delays lead to poor outcomes. Automated patient self-scheduling of outpatient appointments has demonstrable advantages in the form of patients’ arrival rates, labor savings, patient satisfaction, and more. Despite evidence of the potential benefits of self-scheduling, organizational uptake of self-scheduling in health care has been limited. The goal of this scoping study is to identify the barriers and facilitators to self-scheduling for health care organizations. OBJECTIVE - METHODS A scoping review was conducted by searching four databases (PubMed, CINAHL, Business Source Ultimate and Scopus) and systematically reviewing peer-reviewed studies. The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) framework was utilized to catalogue the studies. RESULTS Thirty-one full-text articles were included in the review. Results demonstrated that self-scheduling initiatives have increased over time, indicating the broadening appeal of self-scheduling. The body of literature regarding the intervention characteristics of self-scheduling, including evidence, relative advantage, and adaptability, is appreciable. The influence of national policy was the most-cited external factor, as defined by the CFIR framework. Scholarly pursuit lacked recommendations related to the framework’s inner setting, characteristics of individuals and process. Future discoveries regarding these CFIR domains may help detect, categorize, and appreciate organizational-level barriers and facilitators to self-scheduling to advance knowledge about this solution. CONCLUSIONS The scoping review catalogued evidence of the existence, advantages, and intervention characteristics of patient self-scheduling; gaps in knowledge of the uptake of self-scheduling by health care organizations were identified to inform future research.