Professional Courtesy Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD

Have hygienists or dental assistants schedule appointments.
Certainly this only applies to offices that have computers in the treatment area. When hygienists schedule patients, they become responsible for their schedule and the patients are more likely to keep this “contract” with their provider. After all, they just spent 50 minutes together and this bond might be stronger than with the team member that calls them to confirm. Similar to hygienists, when a dental assistant spends 90 minutes with a crown patient, they have a bond by the end of the appointment. When they schedule the crown seat, they are making plans with the patient to “meet again.” The bigger benefit is the time savings for the front office staff that is often busy with check-in/check-out and multiple incoming phone calls.

What are the penalties for no-shows and last-minute cancellations?
The first step to a consistent approach with unreliable patients is clear communication of your policy. In our office, this starts with printed information at the bottom of all appointment cards. When a patient breaks an appointment in the practice, you are obligated to remind the patient when the infraction is fresh. Of course, documentation is imperative. The penalty for failed appointments in our practice is $1 per minute for the time that was scheduled – reasonable and easy to calculate. Discuss this with your staff at your next meeting and they will enthusiastically support your desire for a consistent policy.

The best offense is a good defense.
One of the most obvious reasons we confirm patients is to catch changes in schedule before they become last-minute cancellations or no-shows. In our office we confirm all appointments by phone two days in advance. The additional day affords us time to recover from any cancellations at the time of confirmation. This is not a perfect system in the age of voice-mail so we are planning to add e-mail confirmation in 2008. We currently do this by request, but there are a number of companies in the industry that offered automated methods for e-mail confirmation. I think patients are more likely to respond to an e-mail than pick up the phone and call back.

I will certainly acknowledge that every situation and circumstance cannot be addressed in this limited space. When all else fails, use your open time to participate on Dentaltown.com. We appreciate your support. Do you have a comment to share or a problem that needs a solution? Send me an e-mail: tom@dentaltown.com.