How to Deal with Cancellations and No-Shows

Cancellations are one of the most frustrating challenges that providers deal with.

You could be having a great week then BOOM! a huge thunderstorm hits your area and you get hit with a wave of cancellations and no-shows for appointments. Kids are missing out on therapy, Therapists are sitting on their hands, and you’re losing revenue.

What can you do about no-shows?

First, I need to share what you CAN’T do. If it’s a FL Medicaid patient, you cannot collect a fee of any kind for a missed appointment. I know! That’s not a popular message but you need to know. If you’re like me and you like to see it in writing, check out the link below to the specific policy details

FL Medicaid policy:

https://ahca.myflorida.com/medicaid/review/General/59G-1.050_General_Medicaid_Policy.pdf

If you can’t get paid for a missed appointment, what other actions can you take to ensure it happens less often?

Because let’s be honest, it will always be a problem. We wanted to share some creative ways that other companies are handling their missed appointments.

1. Offer Teletherapy as an alternative: If they won’t be able to make it to the office location, maybe the client is willing to do a teletherapy session instead. Teletherapy is still new for a lot of providers but it’s a great creative solution to avoid missing the entire appointment.

2. 3 Strike Policy: Cancellation policies are a “must have” for liability purposes and to share with patients up front so they know what’s expected of them. Many offices have a “Strike Rule” that allows patients to cancel or miss up to 3 appointments before being removed from the schedule entirely. The key here is never to discriminate, whatever policy you have needs to be applied fairly to everyone.

3. Give away appointment times: Some appointment times (right after school) are always in demand. If you have a frequent no-show patient in those time slots, you have every right to give that time slot to someone else. Again, it needs to be in your policy but most patients have small windows of time that they’re available so this could be the incentive they need to show up on time.

4. Confirm your appointments: Especially if it’s a new or newer patient, you can’t assume they’ll remember their appointment every week. Confirming each appointment is incredibly time consuming but it’s also the most effective way to reduce the amount of missed appointments. Call, text, email, whatever method they prefer but you need to implement a confirmation system as soon as possible.

Does your office have a unique way of handling cancellations and no-shows? We’d love to hear about it in the comments below.