Application of the experimental design for the analysis of nonattendance to scheduled medical appointments in the Colombian Health System

Abstract

This paper shows a study about nonattendance to medical appointments in the Colombian health system to determine which strategies have the greatest effect on the response variable (nonattendance) of scheduled medical appointments. Three factors were considered (calling the patient, reconfirming on the eve of the appointment, confirming understanding of the procedure), each with two or three levels randomly selected from a population. Two replicates were taken for each combination of treatments. The experimental runs were done randomly to guarantee the absence of bias in data collection. With the above, a total of 180 experimental runs were carried out. This study aims to determine the factors that influence the population when they do not attend their medical appointments to propose a strategy that reduces this phenomenon. A design of experiments (DoE) was performed, specifically a completely randomized design (CRD) and a 3k factorial design.