What is the primary purpose of a healthcare provider's call to a patient about an upcoming visit?

Primary Purpose of Provider Calls About Visits

The primary purpose of a healthcare provider's call to a patient about an upcoming visit should be to elicit the patient's agenda, concerns, and goals for the visit—specifically asking what matters most to them and what they want to accomplish—so that the visit can be structured around patient-centered priorities rather than solely provider-driven objectives. 1

Core Communication Objectives

The call should accomplish several key goals that directly improve clinical outcomes:

Establish Patient Priorities and Concerns

• Ask open-ended questions to identify what the patient most wants to accomplish during the visit 1
• Specifically inquire: "What do you most want to accomplish during this visit?" and "Is there anything that is bothering or concerning you that, if addressed, would help you feel better?" 1
• Use questions like "What are the things that you want to make sure we discuss today?" to give the patient control over the conversation 2
• This approach addresses the reality that patients often bring multiple concerns to visits, and many leave with unmet concerns that can lead to negative health consequences and unnecessary return visits 3

Orient to Patient Understanding

• Ask what the patient already knows and what they want to know about their condition or upcoming visit 1
• Questions should include: "Please tell me what you understand about why you are coming in" and "What have other clinicians told you?" 1
• This prevents information overload and ensures the visit addresses actual knowledge gaps rather than assumed ones 1

Identify Barriers Across Multiple Domains

The call should systematically explore factors that affect the patient's ability to engage in care 1:

• Medical domain: New or worsening symptoms, medication issues, challenges managing other conditions 1
• Physical functioning: Difficulties with daily tasks, mobility issues, activity limitations 1
• Emotional/mental health: Coping with illness, stress, anxiety, depression 1
• Social/environmental: Transportation challenges, appointment access, financial concerns about copays or medications, difficulty understanding medical information, lack of safe exercise space or access to healthy foods 1

Prepare for Therapeutic Connection

• Introduce yourself and your role, explain how the visit will proceed 1
• Set expectations about what will be discussed and why 1
• Begin building trust before the face-to-face encounter, which is particularly critical for telehealth visits where establishing therapeutic relational connection requires intentional effort 1

Critical Pitfalls to Avoid

Don't Assume Silence Means No Concerns

• Many patients are reluctant to raise concerns spontaneously 4
• Younger patients, those not born in the country, and those with higher educational qualifications are more likely to be infrequently asked about their needs 4
• Directly ask about commonly missed areas: emotional symptoms (35% of patients infrequently asked), preferences for family involvement (25% infrequently asked), and preferences for involvement in decision-making (23% infrequently asked) 4

Recognize How Patients Interpret Questions

• When asking "Are there other issues you'd like to address?", patients typically understand this as soliciting "new problems" requiring diagnosis, not ongoing chronic care issues 3
• Be explicit about wanting to hear about both new concerns AND ongoing management issues to avoid this bias 3

Address Practical Logistics

• Confirm appointment details, location, parking, what to bring 1
• A supplementary phone call one week before appointments can reduce non-attendance rates to approximately 1% 1
• Patients who forget appointments account for 30% of no-shows 1

Evidence-Based Rationale

This approach is supported by multiple high-quality guidelines demonstrating that patient-centered agenda setting improves outcomes:

• The American College of Cardiology emphasizes that what matters most to patients should be at the center of care discussions, as often-missed topics (financial concerns, transportation, life demands, lack of support) directly influence adherence and outcomes 1
• The American Society of Clinical Oncology provides strong consensus recommendations that clinicians should use open-ended questions to encourage patients to share what is important to them and consider pre-visit interventions to facilitate this 1
• Research demonstrates that wait times and communication are the most commonly cited factors affecting patient experience (49.4% and 14.6% respectively), with communication including both information exchange and compassionate care 5

The pre-visit call is not primarily about conveying information to the patient—it is about gathering information FROM the patient to structure a visit that addresses their actual priorities, concerns, and barriers to care. 1 This fundamentally shifts the visit from a provider-driven encounter to a patient-centered collaboration that improves adherence, satisfaction, and clinical outcomes 1.