ABSTRACT
Every day patients make appointments with doctors in order for both to be able to schedule their time accordingly. All is well unless one of the parties cancels the appointment. In the case of a cancellation that is within 2 hours of a general practitioner visit or 24 hours of a specialist visit, the patient is usually charged for either the full consultation or part thereof. Doctors may also have reasons to cancel and rearrange their appointments with patients, yet there is no penalty placed on the doctor for such behaviour. There appears to be a mismatch between the disincentives for the patient not to cancel v. those of the doctor not to cancel. In this article, the legal and ethical aspects of charging for a missed appointment will be dealt with in order to determine the current situation in South Africa. Furthermore, research into missed appointments will be discussed to ascertain the major causes and provide recommendations to prevent missed appointments from occurring.
Subject(s)
Appointments and Schedules , No-Show Patients/statistics & numerical data , Office Visits/statistics & numerical data , Physicians/statistics & numerical data , Humans , No-Show Patients/economics , Office Visits/economics , Physicians/economics , South AfricaABSTRACT
Technology is all around us. It helps us to be more productive every day. One of the main ways it does this is by automating processes that would otherwise have taken up our time. Doctors can leverage technology to help remove the burden of performing repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on seeing patients. This article deals with ways in which technology could be used for certain tasks such as renewing prescriptions. Using technology in such a way would fall under the concept of telemedicine. Local guidelines are assessed to ascertain whether the use of apps by patients in South Africa for healthcare advice by doctors would be legal.
