Managing Short Notice Cancellations

Most Dental Practices require two working days notice to change a scheduled appointment.  When receiving a short notice cancellation (SNC) you must use your discretion related to the patient’s reasons for short notice canceling. In circumstances where it is evident that a SNC is due to a clear emergency situation, tolerance and support of the patient’s situation is important.  Re-schedule the appointment at this time if possible.

In situations where a SNC is due to a patient oversight or a patient not wanting to be “inconvenienced” by the appointment, it is important that the patient is supported to make an effort to keep their appointment and inform them of the practice’s cancellation policy related to the possibility of short notice cancellation / no show of future appointments.  Share with the patient that the advanced notification (2 working days) is the time necessary to provide the appointment to other patients wanting to schedule.  This is the only method by which the practice can provide timely service to all the patients of the practice.

Whenever speaking to patients about the practice’s scheduling policies the purpose is to educate and make the patient aware, with the intent of saving the integrity of the patient’s relationship with the practice. Follow the communication guidelines in Recall System Pro.  It is important not to take the cancellation personally or react negatively towards the patient.

In situations where the patient’s behavior simply reflects disregard or a negligent attitude towards keeping appointments, it is important that the patient is made aware of the cancellation policy, and that future appointments may need to be secured with a credit card number.

Always make a note in the patient’s chart related to any type of SNC or No Show situation. Indicate the date, short notice cancellation & reason given, patient notified of policy, and your initials. This record will help you to deal with the patient appropriately if any future incidences occur.

Recall 1,2,3

In our work with dental practices over the years we identified three steps every practice can take to maximize results and the benefits of recall:

1. Pre-appoint 90% of your patients before they leave your practice.

Why?

• It's easier to move a scheduled patient than book an unscheduled patient.
• Prevents patients from getting lost in your practice management system.
• Patients will make more of an effort to keep an appointment they have than book an appointment they don't have.

How?

• Ask for a tentative commitment vs. hard commitment.
• Communicate with confidence – use the right language / scripts.
• Reassure patients - you can always move the appointment if necessary.

2. Confirm patients sooner - 90% before their appointment dates.

Why?

• Gives patients more time to keep or move their appointments.
• Gives you more time to confirm appointments and fill openings.
• Significantly reduces cancellations and no shows.

How?

• Start sooner – two weeks in advance.
• Use the right language – stress the importance of reserved appointments.
• Confirming sooner produces a 50% drop in cancellations.

3. Focus on scheduling 90% of your due patients before late and overdue patients.

Why?

• Focus on trying to keep up with everything all at once can be overwhelming.
• Due patients are the most responsive.
• Puts out the right message.

How?

• Schedule designated time to follow up due patients.
• Most practices can find 1 to 2 hours per week.
• Catch up on late patients when you can – over time results accumulate.

If you'd like to download the complete resource, click here and choose "3 Steps Every Practice Can Take".

Recall System Management – The Unsung Hero Of Dental Practice Performance

About 15 years ago, I realized the attention we had placed on recall system management was not only contributing to hygiene department growth – it was also contributing to dentist chair productivity. I came to understand that recall system effectiveness directly contributed to overall dental practice performance and played a key role in dental teams being able to reach their goals.

From our experience, we also know that recall is often the last system attended to as far as office area responsibilities are concerned. This is not due to neglect but rather due to:

• A shortage of office staff resources.
• Day to day demands of serving patients and dealing with interruptions.
• Dealing with open and broken appointments requiring immediate attention.
• Lack of coordination and prioritization of key office systems.
• Limited systemization or tools to support staff to properly manage recall.

These factors lead to office teams continually being at the effect of their schedules. It is far too common to see schedules managing office teams versus office teams managing their schedules. For many dental office staff, it seems impossible to get ahead of their daily or weekly schedules.

From our perspective, it is possible to break free from this stressful way of working. An effective recall system can provide a fully scheduled hygiene department months in advance. Keep watching this space! We’ll be talking about the actions office teams can take to minimize this type of scheduling stress in our upcoming blog entries.

Welcome to Recall System Pro's Blog

Over the past 20 years, along with my wife and business partner Heather Sparrow, we have operated a dental practice management consulting firm in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

As consultants, our primary focus has been to assist dentists and their teams to maximize the productivity of their practices while providing patients with the highest standards of treatment, service and care possible. No easy task. 

It’s not easy dealing with the complexities and demands of managing a busy dental practice, running a successful business and consistently providing patients with high standards of care.

Over time and after many hard earned lessons, we came to understand that patient recall was one of the most important systems to the overall success of dental practices. Not only did patient recall have a beneficial impact on the dental health of patients, recall systems also drove hygiene and restorative revenues and had a direct impact on patient retention and practice growth. We realized that if you took care of patient recall, practice productivity and other key factors that determine the long term success of dental practices, simply start falling into place. As a result, we decided to make patient recall a primary focus of our consulting practice. 

On the other side of the coin, we also came to understand that patient recall was one of the most difficult and challenging systems for dental practices to get a handle on.  Practices tended to struggle with a number of costly and time consuming problems with the most challenging being slippage. Recall systems are notoriously subject to slippage and by the time you figure out you have a problem, it takes months to correct. In the meantime, dental teams are trapped having to deal with empty chairs, lost revenues and high doses of stress over prolonged periods.

As a result of these problems, it became clear to us that under-performing recall systems were costing dental practices hundreds of thousands in lost revenues annually.  Practices simply did not have the systemization or tools they needed to put an end to these challenges and take advantage of the difference a well run recall system could make. 

In response, we developed a comprehensive patient recall system to assist our clients to effectively deal with these problems and fully benefit from recall. Our system eventually played a major role in our clients success and as challenging as it was to systemize recall, it was  equally rewarding to see the difference an effective recall system could make for practice productivity and growth.

We are dedicating this blog to providing all of the information we can to assist dental teams to take advantage of the benefits of patient recall and maximize the growth of their  practices. We hope you will join us and we are always open for questions or comments.