Manage risk with no show and cancellation reminders.

Patient no-shows and appointment cancellations can drastically impact practice revenue. 

With missed appointments costing the American healthcare system $150 billion every year, your clinic could be seeing anywhere between a 5% to 30% no-show rate. Every 60 minutes’ worth of missed appointment is costing clinics an average of $200 every time. 

Automated appointment reminders make the most of your available time slots by reducing no-shows and cancellations, so you’re not losing out on potential revenue. 

Moreover, the more frequently a patient no-shows, cancels, or simply forgets about their appointment, the more likely they are to be disengaged with your practice and their medical and dental care, resulting in the potential loss of a patient.

Automated appointment reminders are an effective way to reduce patient no-shows, and are more likely to be received than a phone call. If there’s one thing people don’t like these days, it’s picking up the phone. Email and text appointment reminders are a non-invasive way to remind your patients about their appointments – and they’ll appreciate you for it.

Automated appointment reminders are a 24/7 service, unlike your physical staff. You can set up patient reminders so they’re sending outside business hours, when patients are more likely to see them.

Automated appointment reminders can be sent the same day of a patient’s appointment, so that “I forgot about my appointment” becomes an excuse of the past.

Curious to know how much patient no-shows are affecting your bottom line? 

Here’s how to calculate the impact of no-shows on your clinic: Multiply your average number of patients per month by your average revenue per appointment. Multiply that number by your average no-show rate. Make sure your reports are showing only true no-shows and not rescheduled appointments. 

That’s the amount of revenue you’re losing every month to no-shows. 

NexHealth’s automated reminder software solution can help you recuperate a large portion of this lost revenue and even pay for itself in the process. 

With automated appointment alerts, patients can still cancel appointments – but they’re more likely to cancel with ample notice, giving other patients the chance to use those cancelled time slots.

When you have automated text and email appointment reminders, appointment cancellations can happen with enough notice for clinic staff to move patients off waitlists and on to your schedule.
When your appointment reminder solution comes with online booking, your cancellations become free appointments in real time. Other patients can then automatically book over that time without manual calendar management from your staff using our ASAP List feature.

Your automated appointment reminders should reflect the unique personality of your practice, but here are a few guidelines to help keep your appointment reminder messages engaging and succinct:

• Keep your automated appointment reminders as short as possible so your patients retain the most important piece of information: the date and time of their appointment. 
• Keep them clear. Include only the most important information, such as date, time, and appointment location. Email & text marketing messages are a great place for practice branding.
• Keep them simple. Add an easy way for patients to confirm their appointment after the first text reminder. The standard mechanism for confirmation is to ask patients to respond with “C” for confirmation or “Y/N” to clarify whether they’ll be able to make it. 
• Keep them HIPAA-compliant. Never include more information than you have to in a text reminder. That means leaving out appointment details like reason for appointment, treatment plans, etc.
  

Text and email appointment reminders are allowed under HIPAA, as long as your clinic adopts software that secures patient data and that the information you include in your appointment reminder messages is HIPAA-compliant. 

Here are a few best practices to ensure your dental marketing messages are secure: 

• Limit the amount of private medical information in all appointment reminder communication. For example, instead of specifying that your communication is from “Cosmetic Dentistry Services”, make sure the reminder comes from “Dr. Allen.” 
• Don’t use your patients’ names in reminders if you can avoid it.
• Finally, don’t include information about diagnoses or treatment plans in reminders.
  

Still in need of inspiration? Explore our appointment reminder messaging templates. 

Yes! Coupled with automated appointment reminders, telehealth services can be an effective way to reduce patient no-shows. 

Additionally, telehealth services remove many of the difficulties associated with in-person visits. 

Some of the more recent reasons why patients missed appointments include childcare challenges, increased anxiety about associated risks when visiting healthcare facilities, and  reduced income.