Dental Appointment Adherence Patterns in the College of Dentistry, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences: Insights From Electronic Dental Records

Background The purpose of this study was to determine the pattern of dental appointment adherence in the College of Dentistry (COD), King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS). Methodology The electronic dental record SALUD (Two-Ten Health, Dublin, Ireland; n = 15,193) was used in this cross-sectional study. The primary outcome measure was adherence to dental appointments, categorized as attended, canceled by the patient, canceled by the school, or missed. Other variables of interest were demographic and appointment-related factors. Descriptive statistics were used to describe patterns of dental appointments. In addition, the proportion of check-in time for dental appointments among those who attended was calculated. For requested dental appointments among dental specialties, we calculated the percentage of booked, canceled, and rejected appointment requests for each specialty and compared the proportions across specialties. Results The proportion of attended dental appointments was 70.92% (10,775), with 9.14% (1,388) of appointments being missed and 16.70% (2,537) being canceled. Approximately 54% (5,765) of dental appointments were checked in on time. Approximately 77% (10,115) of dental appointment requests were scheduled. Pedodontics and orthodontics had the most scheduled appointments, while restorative dentistry had the most appointment requests. Conclusions The utilization of data from electronic dental records revealed a low rate of missed dental appointments. Identifying those who were late or skipped appointments was critical to determining the possible causes.