When patients skip their appointments, it drains sorely needed revenue from health care, and no provider escapes it. Patients cancel their appointment at the last minute or, worse, ghost their appointment entirely. They miss needed treatment, risk getting sicker, and occupy a time block that another patient would have eagerly taken. Patients are even skipping telehealth appointments.
Clinicians, under pressure to stay productive, are burdened with occupying themselves until the next scheduled patient (hopefully) arrives. By some estimates, no shows cost the American health care system $150 billion per year.
Various studies have shown providers’ no-show rates average 5.5% to 50% — a range that can easily drive a provider’s losses into the millions. A 20% no-show rate costs a clinic that schedules 100 patients per day $25,000 per week. That’s $1.3 million per year.
Many best practices for reducing no shows have been proffered, and research has studied who’s most likely to not show (heads up on Monday appointments in September.)
Mitigate What You Can’t Prevent
That work is all good, but at HiMS, we’re working today on the third leg of the no-show stool – filling late-breaking vacancies as often as possible.
Filling the slot has typically been a race against time that the provider loses. For most integrated health care systems, a cancellation even several hours prior to the appointment isn’t enough notice to schedule another patient in the suddenly vacant time block. It just takes too long for a cancellation to be confirmed, announced internally, and filled by a willing patient who’s available to answer scheduling emails and phone calls. Even if all that works, the question remains whether the fill-in patient can get to the clinic in time.
We are working to close the gap by automating no-shows. Here’s how it works:
- When there’s a cancellation, an office staffer deletes the appointment with one click, and all relevant colleagues are immediately and automatically notified. No manual emails or phone tag, and everything is logged.
- Patients on “the waiting list” are simultaneously alerted to the vacancy.
- Any patient who wants to take advantage of the sudden opening clicks a link to accept the new appointment.
If it sounds simple, it is. All the technology exists; we’re just bringing it together in an elegant solution for AxiomEHR customers.
It’s one more feature you asked for that we’re happily creating and that works for everyone.
