Do you get failed appointments?

In my daily practice there was one thing that always upset me — failed appointments.

I’m here, the team is here, we’re all waiting and the patient doesn't show up. The overhead of the office is ticking over as usual and there is no one here to work on. Even worse if you are booked solid and you could have easily filled the space with someone else.

From observing my own and many other practices I've noticed that 2 factors reliably predict failed appointments. If your front desk team watch these then you can get rid of a big percentage of your failed appointments:

1. Past history
   The old saying goes, a leopard can't change its spots. Unreliable people often fail appointments and if anyone has failed twice before then they are much more likely to fail in future. I don't care how genuine their excuses sound. I once visited a practice where a patient had 14 failed appointments over a period of two years. That office would have been better off financially to pay this person $200 to go see the dentist down the street.

2. Owing money
   People who owe money are dramatically more likely to fail appointments. They know that if they show up they will have to settle their account so they don’t come.

So, what to do.

Firstly make sure that you always enter failed appointments in the patient's record. I'd classify any appointment changed with less than 4 hours notice as a failed appointment. The excuse the patient makes is irrelevant. Unreliable people are expert at making up plausible-sounding excuses. “My cat died.”, “My car broke down.” etc. etc.

Then, I'd insist that, prior to making any appointment, the front desk staff check 2 things:

• Is the patient current with their payments? If not, put off booking another appointment until they are.

• Is the patient's past record good? If there are two or more failed appointments then get a non-refundable booking deposit. Some patients will complain and refuse to pay a booking deposit. What to do then? You can choose to take the risk or you can refuse to see the patient. Personally I'd do the latter.