Patient no-shows can be a huge financial blow to your practice, costing the industry an estimated $150 billion per year. Besides lost revenue, they can cause other issues for the practice and your patients. These include delayed care, wasted resources, poor staff productivity, and reduced quality of service.
While it’s not always possible to avoid missed appointments, there are some strategies you can try to minimize them. This includes using the patient’s preferred method of communication, proactively reaching out to reschedule via text, offering digital check-ins, and reducing wait times. In addition, many healthcare trends show that implementing an empathetic tone for contacting patients after they miss their appointment is more effective than accusatory language.
Some of the most common reasons for missing healthcare appointments are scheduling difficulties and transportation obstacles. One strategy to reduce these barriers is partnering with rideshare services like Uber or Lyft to provide free or low-cost rides for your patients. Another way to address these challenges is to provide your patients with a list of local rideshare options so they can make an informed decision about which transportation option to use.
Other common reasons for missed appointments are lack of access to healthcare services and a general feeling of dissatisfaction with their provider. To tackle this issue, healthcare practices are providing their patients with a variety of new ways to access healthcare services, including mobile apps for scheduling and communicating with providers, virtual visit capabilities, telehealth services, and more. These new ways to connect with their healthcare providers are improving the quality of patient experiences and helping them feel more satisfied. healthcare trends to avoid missed appointments
