Reminder texts help radiology department reduce nuclear medicine appointment cancelations

Reminder texts prior to imaging appointments helped one radiology department to reduce cancellations, according to new research. 

Efficient scheduling is becoming increasingly important as demand for nuclear medicine services grows, experts write in the Journal of the American College of Radiology. Unlike general radiology exams, such services often can require “strict and time sensitive” preparation, such as avoiding caffeine prior to cardiac nuclear stress testing.

The Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida, recently has experimented in using automated pre-test text messages to help remind patients to adhere to these instructions. They’re seeing early success, cutting the number of rescheduled nuclear exams, among other benefits. 

“Pre-procedure messaging improved scheduling efficiency by reducing cancellations, rescheduling and appointment delays for cardiac stress tests and FDG PET, highlighting the potential of pre-procedure communication to enhance patient adherence and operational workflow,” corresponding author Ryoko Sato, PhD, with Siemens Healthineers, and co-authors wrote May 8. 

The Mayo Clinic first implemented automated messages for cardiac stress tests on June 1, 2025, and later expanded it into FDG PET (fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography) imaging the following month. Sato and colleagues evaluated the success of the experiment using measures including intent-to-treat (messages sent vs. not sent) and per-protocol (messages opened vs. not opened). 

Among nearly 1,500 stress test appointments, the intent-to-treat analysis showed a nonsignficicant reduction in cancellations or rescheduling. Meanwhile, the per-protocol analysis showed significantly lower cancellation or rescheduling (5.91% vs. 3.21%). Among over 2,600 FDG PET appointments, auto-messaging significantly reduced cancelations or rescheduling in the intent-to-treat analysis (2.46% vs. 1.13%), with consistent per-protocol findings in the other analysis. Among completed PET appointments, median delay times were significantly reduced with the intervention based on both scheduling timestamps (5.67 vs. 0.43 minutes) and imaging system metadata (59.6 vs. 52.5 minutes). 

“Operationally, these results suggest that pre-procedure messaging can reduce the number of same-day cancellations and reschedules, allowing for more predictable scheduling and better utilization of high-cost imaging equipment,” the authors noted. “The fact that improvements were observed across both modalities, despite differing preparation requirements, demonstrates the flexibility and generalizability of the approach.”

Read much more, including potential study limitations, in JACR.