Twilio Well-Child Visit Pilot Open Trial

Overview

This project will use Twilio as a platform for a text messaging campaign to implement timely follow up with parents/guardians of children ages 0 to 17 years who have no-showed for WCVs. The first phase of the study will be an open trial to assess feasibility and acceptability of three different reminder messages, analyze preliminary data, and collect feedback from participants using interviews to identify the top one or two performing messages. Each reminder message will at minimum direct parents/guardians to reschedule by phone or by the patient portal. These findings will be used to conduct the second phase of the study, a randomized controlled trial.

Well-Child visits (WCV) are an opportunity to maximize the health and future well-being and development of children. Missed visits, however, can result in negative outcomes for patients and families and for the healthcare system. For patients, missed primary care visits can result in greater Emergency Department (ED) visits and hospitalizations, and in delays in diagnosing a variety of medical conditions, including identification of child abuse and neglect. For healthcare systems, missed visits result in decreased efficiency, lower quality measures, decreased provider productivity, and loss in revenue. Although smart phones are nearly ubiquitous, even among more economically disadvantaged populations, literature to date has reported only on using text messages for pre-visit reminders. There is a tremendous opportunity to study use of text messaging to engage families in follow-up for missed WCV. Even more so, testing the use of text messages with different content is missing, as well as using text messages to invite patients to share reasons for missing the last WCV.