A problem that your healthcare facility most likely faces is a patient missed appointment. There are many costs associated with this issue, both monetary and not. Let’s look at how missed appointments can affect your facility.
The Monetary Value of A Missed Appointment
According to Forbes, there is an estimated cost of over $150 billion each year for the U.S. healthcare system with missed appointments. Your medical practice or facility is just one of many across the U.S. that deals with this problem.
Patients rarely understand the impact that missing an appointment can have on a facility, which is why many facilities enforce a missed appointment fee or a no show appointment policy. This can help prevent missed appointments but it won’t get rid of the problem entirely.
Additional Missed Appointment Costs
In addition to the monetary value of a missed appointment, no-shows can also impact the patient-doctor relationship. If a patient does not feel connected to their healthcare team, they are less likely to return for future appointments. This is why patient communication and building relationships with your patients are extremely important.
Also, missed appointments may cause you to rethink staffing and availability times. If you see that patients are less responsive or missing appointments during certain times of the day, you may need to rethink your availability for those times. In order for a patient to put their health first, they need to find times that also work with their schedules.
How To Prevent Missed Appointments
There are a few medical practice solutions you could implement to reduce the amount of missed appointments from your patients.
1. Contact your patient before the appointment
Whether you send an email, text, or give them a call, contacting your patient to remind them of their appointment can reduce the number of no-shows in your facility. It’s good practice to do this a few days before the appointment so they have time to prepare.
Notivate Health’s appointment reminder platform is completely customizable to you. We have made this as easy as possible to connect with your patients and prevent missed appointments. For example, our application includes features such as two-way messaging for rescheduling, unique landing pages, multiple points of contact, real-time appointment confirmations, and appointment recall notifications.
2. Build connections with your patients
When your patient feels that their health is a priority to you, they will be more willing to make it a priority themselves. Building relationships with your patients, understanding their needs, and answering their questions can all create essential trust in your organization.
3. Implement a waitlist
If patients know that they can easily reschedule their appointments, they will be less likely to miss them altogether… However, a rescheduled appointment means you now have an empty time slot for your facility.
Instead of calling around to try and find a patient to fill that newly-opened spot, an automated waitlist like ours can make this process easier for everyone involved. Our digital waitlist sends automatic texts to patients on the waitlist to let them know there is a sooner appointment available that they can book. By simply responding yes or no, they can book an earlier appointment and you don’t have to worry about an empty time slot.
Dealing With the Cost of a Missed Appointment
This problem that faces many healthcare facilities can be easily dealt with by implementing a few simple systems. Rather than losing time, money, and relationships with your patients due to missed appointments, you can use systems that work for you and provide a better overall patient experience.
Request a demo today to see how Notivate can help you prevent no-shows in your facility, and make sure you subscribe to our blog for more healthcare content.
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