Patient No-Show Appointment Management
Processes and Technology to Improve Appointment Adherence
Automation and
Patient No-Shows
Appointment no-shows are a big challenge for medical practices. No-shows lead to lost revenue, productivity, wasted resources, and disrupted care. There are strategies that healthcare facilities can implement to reduce no-show rates. This document shows you details on how Analog Informatics AI technology automates the management of patient no-shows.
Patient Support Community Engagement
- Patients can add/remove others to be informed about their appointments and care in real time.
- Office staff can add others to be informed during intake based on the patient’s permission.
- Additional parties receive notifications of new appointment bookings, arrivals, pick-ups, no-shows, cancellations, and pathology status.
- Additional parties keep patients on schedule and minimize no-shows.
Pre-Appointment Reminders
- All patients and guests receive a welcome message to the practice on their first appointment. This message introduces them to the practice, their provider, and other info.
- Patients and authorized third parties receive appointment reminders, calendar files, pre-op care instructions, transportation/parking info, Uber/Lyft links to the office, nearby pharmacies, WiFi, restroom location/access details, and navigation to the office.
Missed Appointment Detection
- Front desk staff are required to change the appointment status in the EMR to no-show when they have determined the patient is a no-show.
- No-shows should be recorded within a couple of hours of the determination.
- There is no need to leave the EMR and no additional work to begin re-engagement of no-show patients.
Appointment Anomaly Detection
- Communication workflows to patients and guests are based on the accurate and timely entry of changes in appointment status in the EMR by the front desk staff.
- All appointments must end as Fulfilled (completed), No-Show, or Cancelled.
- When we detect changes in appointment status, we switch to the appropriate workflows for the appointment type.
- Our AI technology detects appointments that have not been completed correctly by staff. We automatically generate alerts to staff when we detect errors.
- Once mistakes are corrected, our AI takes over completing the appropriate workflows.
Re-Engagement
- When our software detects an appointment status changing to No-Show in your EMR, we immediately email and text the patient (and their authorized contacts) to reschedule their appointment online (link provided) or to directly contact the office.
- Repeated reminder messages are generated until the patient re-engages with the practice.
- The number of reminders and their frequency are controlled by the practice.
Rescheduling
- Patients are given custom website links in their re-engagement messages to reschedule their visit.
- The website page for rescheduling can provide immediate self-service selection of a new time slot based on the appointment type and new patient status (new or existing patient).
- The practice can provide different options for rescheduling based on the appointment type, location, and practitioners’ preferences. Some medical practices prefer that the patient call the office directly to set a new appointment, depending on the appointment type.
Tracking Results
- Different no-show strategies produce different results.
- Operational No-Show data is available and charted continuously.
- Charts for the number of No-Shows, Cancellations, and Self-Service Rebookings over the last 7 days are on the administrator console.
- Data can be sorted and filtered by location and date.
- Automation options for patients, such as cancellations and rescheduling by self-service, produce happier patients and a fuller schedule.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Most practices ignore no-show patients and have no methodology to get them to re-engage.
- AI-automated messaging workflows take over the task of reminding patients, caregivers, families, and others to have patients reschedule.
- Patients can contact your staff or use our self-service scheduling based on open time slots in the EMR.
- Your staff no longer needs to manually make outbound calls, emails, or texts to no-show patients.
- Neglecting your no-shows is simply ignoring revenue that is easy to capture with the right technology.
