Patient cancellations can become extremely problematic in the dental office. While occasional cancellations may be the norm, many offices usually experience an explosion of cancellations in the fall due to school viruses and unexpected changes in people’s schedules.
Unfortunately, cancellations can sometimes leave you with very few options to recover from them in most practices. To combat these unavoidable last-minute cancellations, you will need to ensure that your current systems are in place and working efficiently to ensure that all healthy patients attend their appointments.
Your VIP/Priority patient lists should be kept up to date so that you have a pool of patients to contact for any cancellations.
We teach people how to treat us by how we treat them. If you don’t honour your patient’s time and are always running late, cancelling appointments or changing appointment times, you may find your patients mirroring this behaviour. It’s hard to be upset with patients when this happens.
Patients who don’t value their appointments are more likely to change them. Many patients will think that it doesn’t matter if they change their appointment because it’s “just” a cleaning. To counter this, you will want to ensure that the hygienists constantly educate patients throughout each appointment about the benefits of keeping to their hygiene schedule as well as the consequences of not following their diagnosed perio intervals.
Many offices are worried about “losing” patients on the computer if they don’t pre-appoint them. You won’t lose patients if you are using your software correctly. User error is the only cause for losing patients in your software. Pre-appoint only patients with a stable schedule, a good history of keeping appointments, and compliance with their dental diagnosis. If a patient does not fit into this category, let them know that you will contact them a few weeks before their due date. This will avoid short-notice cancellations with patients who aren’t reliable.
Verbiage throughout the office must be consistent so the patient values their appointment. Often, when patients are asked to book their next appointment if they hesitate, team members will say, “Let’s just book it, and then you will at least have the appointment. You can always call and change it closer.” This messaging can very often be the downfall of a well-booked schedule. With that one statement, you have actually given the patient permission to cancel.
Remember to collect data about your cancellations and no-show appointments to ensure that you make decisions based on accurate data, not just a bad day now and then. Your cancellation and no-show percentage should be considered differently than your unscheduled time. These two scenarios should be less than 10% in hygiene chairs and less than 6% in dentist chairs.
If you make it easy for patients to cancel, then it is more likely to happen, and you are reinforcing their poor behaviour. If a patient who rarely cancels calls cannot make their appointment, it’s best to err on empathy and understanding. A “serial canceler” patient should not be allowed to cancel an appointment without consequence. They can be asked to call back with a date that will work for their schedule and shouldn’t be offered another appointment on the spot.
Ensure your team has been adequately trained on best practices for handling cancellations. Have written protocols for how each scenario should be handled to ensure uniformity and that each team member is familiar with how you want cancellations handled.
If you are dealing with cancellation issues and have difficulty identifying the root cause, it’s helpful to recruit a fresh set of eyes. A coach can give you valuable insight you can use to prevent your schedule from crumbling unnecessarily.
