Missed medical appointment among hypertensive and diabetic outpatients in a tertiary healthcare facility in Ibadan, Nigeria

Association between attendance at outpatient follow-up appointments and blood pressure control among patients with hypertension

“…Regular treatment follow-up is an important component of effective disease management especially for long term conditions [9,10]. For patients with hypertension, treatment follow-up provides an opportunity for healthcare practitioners to adjust patient's treatment regimen, assess patient's adherence to the therapy, monitor any adverse effects and improve patient's understanding of disease management [11][12][13]. The research has demonstrated that regular attendance at treatment follow-up appointments is associated with better treatment outcomes in patients with hypertension [8,9,[14][15][16].…”

Young, obese, and underweight patients show up inadequately at scheduled appointments: Findings from a record-based study on diabetic, hypertensive diabetic, and hypertensive patients attending a primary care clinic of Puducherry

“…In a record based study conducted in primary care NCD clinics of South Africa and in cardiology and endocrinology clinics of a tertiary care hospital in Nigeria, similar findings were reported, where the majority of patients were females i.e., around 74.2% and 60%, respectively. [45] In addition, in our study, less than 30% of the patients were aged less than 50 years of age. This was slightly higher than the study conducted at Nigeria who reported that only 14.7% hypertensive, and 23% diabetic patients were aged 50 years or less.…”

“…This was slightly higher than the study conducted at Nigeria who reported that only 14.7% hypertensive, and 23% diabetic patients were aged 50 years or less. [5] The low registration of males and younger population in the NCD clinic in our study can be attributed to the day timings of the clinic, when most males and younger population is out for work. Lower registration of younger patients also points toward the lower prevalence of diabetes and hypertension in this age group.…”

“…One of the key challenges in the management of common NCDs is the lack of adequate adherence to follow-up and treatment because of the chronic nature of the disease and the need for long-term medications. [456] In NCD clinics functioning in public primary care settings, where drugs are provided free of cost; missed appointments lead to sub-optimal disease control, thereby, defeating one of the most important purposes of providing free drugs. Missed appointments have been reported to be a global challenge to the healthcare providers across different types of diseases.…”

“…It has been evident from various studies that patient characteristics combined with contextual factors have a potential effect on clinical outcomes. [411] Individual characteristics such as age, socio-economic status, race, education, occupation, distance from primary health care facilities,[45711] history of other chronic conditions,[4] prior history of missing follow-ups,[11] poor knowledge about the disease concerned, exposure to side effect of medications, and lack of reminders[58] are found to be associated with non-adherence to follow-up. However, to the best of our knowledge, we could not find a study in India which had used routinely maintained data to document patient level demographic and clinical characteristics among patients attending any NCD clinic in a primary care context and explore which of these are the factors associated with missed appointments.…”