Patient no-shows can be one of the main sources of uncertainty for a medical practice, affecting physician productivity, financial stability and practice efficiency. To minimize this uncertainty, a number of different strategies have been employed or suggested by professional organizations, consultants and other practices to achieve optimum practice productivity. A few scheduling, financial, technological and patient management strategies are discussed below.
Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) suggests medical practices schedule accurately to avoid long wait times for patients. Patients who consistently have extended wait times are more likely to miss their appointments. Other successful scheduling strategies:
Note: Some practices have used overbooking as a scheduling strategy, with varying degrees of success. When the number of patients who show up exceeds normal system capacity, it can cost the practice in patient wait time and length of a clinical day—which results in overtime pay. If the patient experiences long wait times, it can reflect poorly on the medical practice. In the long run, problems created by overbooking may outweigh any benefits.
Whether or not a medical practice uses financial strategies to help minimize no-shows depends on many factors including whether or not the practice has the resources to implement these strategies, your patient population, payer policies and other factors. Some financial strategies to consider include:
Technology can now expand the capabilities of your staff improve communication with your patients and help you keep more updated records of patient interactions. Some suggestions and considerations include:
Get your patients actively involved in the process of remembering their appointments and keeping you updated by implementing some simple strategies:
Medical practices can help improve their productivity by integrating into their processes specific scheduling, financial, technological or patient management strategies. Which combination of these strategies will work best for your medical practice depends on the resources you have available, current technologies, existing processes or workflows, budget for new investments, the demographics of your patients and many other factors. However, medical practices can achieve significant benefits by investing the time to analyze their operations and applying appropriate strategies.
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