Patients in the United States who do not speak English as their first language must contend with many socioeconomic and medical obstacles. These barriers impact how they receive, access, and understand their healthcare needs. These factors also influence the frequency of patients missing their (or their child’s) medical appointments. In the medical literature, missed appointments are referred to as Missed Care Opportunities (MCO). Many problems arise when patients miss their scheduled clinical appointments. Previous research has been conducted to better understand why patients miss their appointments. However, most of the available literature focuses on aggregate MCO. Subset analysis stratified by language typically includes only “English”, “non-English/Spanish”, and “Other”. Most studies have not systematically looked at other languages because of the predominance of non-English/Spanish speakers in the United States today.
For this reason, this study's focus is to better understand the impact of language on MCO in the ambulatory Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition clinics at Boston Children’s Hospital. The hypothesis of this study is that the MCO rate is more significant in patients from marginalized communities, including patients who do not speak English as their first language, come from an economically disadvantaged background, or have a minority background. The plan for this study is to translate the statistical findings to develop initiatives to serve this community better and reduce the MCO rate.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/48347 |
| Date | 06 March 2024 |
| Creators | Nabbosa, Gloria N. |
| Contributors | Offner, Gwynneth D., Rufo, Paul A. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Page generated in 0.1617 seconds