Maintaining physician productivity, financial stability and practice efficiency are ongoing concerns among medical practice administrators. One factor that is the most difficult to predict, and therefore has a significant impact on a medical practice, are patient no-shows. Optimizing the schedule is one way to address these concerns. The most effective way to address the uncertainty, however, is by proactively developing and implementing no-show reduction strategies to keep patients from forgetting their appointments.
Optimizing the schedule won’t reduce your no-show rate. A patient reminder workflow and follow-up process will help patients remember and keep their appointments, thereby reducing no-shows. Using an automated appointment communication and confirmation system along with the reminder workflow and follow-up process can be a cost-effective and efficient way to reduce patient no-show rates. In order to derive the greatest benefits from any automated appointment reminder and confirmation system and achieve the greatest no-show rate reductions, medical practices should follow these important steps:
Conduct an assessment of your current operations, processes, patient demographics and no-show patterns
Define specific objectives you’d like to achieve
Develop strategies to achieve your objectives
Create an effective automated communication workflow and follow-up process to help you achieve your objectives.
In their ebook, How to Effectively Use an Appointment Confirmation System to Reduce Your No-show Rate, Vital Interaction provides examples of how these steps are applied. Taking two fictionalized medical practices with very different operational and no-show challenges through the steps, they illustrate how each medical practice identified issues, proactively implemented strategies to address patient no-shows and created efficiencies for themselves using automated appointment reminder and confirmation systems.
Tracking and addressing no-show trends and patterns is an important factor in improving practice productivity. It’s also important to develop a reminder process or workflow that will help patients remember their appointments. Using an automated appointment communication and confirmation system can be a cost-effective and efficient way to greatly reduce patient no-show rates—which, in turn, improves physician productivity, financial stability and practice efficiency. Download the ebook today to learn more.