CareDay Family1 in 5 appointments gets missed. So I built an app to fix it.
When I started reading about missed appointments, I found out it wasn't just my family. It happens constantly.
How often appointments get missed
Researchers at a large medical center in Houston looked at twelve years of appointments across ten outpatient clinics. On average, 18.8% of patients didn't show up. That's close to one in five.
Some places have it much worse. The same paper notes that other studies have found no-show rates anywhere from 3% to 80%, depending on the type of clinic and the patients it serves. At one children's clinic, 38% of families missed their appointment when they didn't get a reminder.
Why it matters
A missed appointment isn't only a wasted slot. The Houston study estimated each no-show cost the clinic about $196 in 2008. For the patient, it can mean waiting weeks or months for the next opening, a prescription that runs out, or a problem that gets worse in the meantime.
And most people don't miss appointments on purpose. Appointments are often booked months ahead, written on a card that gets lost, or saved in one person's calendar while someone else is the one who has to drive.
April 2027
Booked 6 months agoReminders actually work
The good news is that a simple reminder makes a real difference. A review of 21 studies found that patients who received digital reminders were about 25% less likely to miss their appointment. At that children's clinic, text reminders brought the no-show rate down from 38% to about 24%.
Clinics send reminders, but not all of them do, and they usually go to just one person. If you're the parent, the adult child or the partner who keeps track of everyone, you need reminders for the whole family in one place.
What I built
CareDay Family is an iPhone app for keeping track of your family's medical appointments and getting reminded before each one. I built it for the person who keeps the whole household's schedule in their head and is tired of that being the only backup.
If that sounds like you, I'd love for you to try it and tell me what would make it better.