By: Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, MAGD, Publisher, DentalTown Magazine

My favorite question in the whole wide world is, “How do you eliminate cancellations and no shows?” That question is so easy. You just take the entire planet and throw it into the sun. Fixed that! Moses received the ten Commandments 3,500 years ago. Has anything changed? Why don’t you ask the president or your governor how to eliminate lying, cheating and stealing? People are people and that is why the more things change, the more they stay the same. So since there will be lying, cheating, cancellations and no shows until the end of time, the question is, “How do you handle them?”

It is 8 a.m. in your practice, your front office staff has just listened to the voice messages and you have two afternoon cancellations in your hygiene schedule. What do you do?

Here are some suggestions from my front office staff:

Look at your schedule for that day. Our hygiene scheduling coordinator audits the patients the day before their appointment. She checks to see if the patients in the doctor’s schedule are due but not scheduled for a recall visit or if they are scheduled in the near future and can be moved up. (Be sure to check their insurance restrictions when moving a patient forward in the schedule.) Those patients due for a hygiene visit are marked on our daily operatory schedule with an “*” so that everyone in the practice is aware of their status. The goal is to accommodate our patients who are already in the office. We are able to save them an extra trip to our office – and for those hard to commit patients, the acceptance level goes up when they are asked face to face! By raising the awareness, our doctor’s assistants and hygienists are able to help coordinate the patient’s transition from restorative into hygiene. FYI – our hygiene scheduling coordinator also verifies whether our scheduled hygiene patients are due for full mouth x-rays, Panorex or bitewings and if the patients have insurance coverage available.

Print the Short Call List. All practice management software should have the ability to track patients who are scheduled but would like to come in sooner, or prefer a specific time or day should it become available. In SoftDent, this is called the “Short Call List”. My front office staff simply marks the “Short Call” box on the appointment card when making the appointment. In the appointment notes the staff indicates the patients’ preference. When an opening becomes available, a staff member is able to print this report that lists all the patients who have indicated they want to come in sooner or have a specific time/day preference.

This report works especially well with the early morning and late afternoon appointments that are so popular and hard to come by. Patients appreciate the call and will generally take the available appointment time. If they are unable to take the appointment, we ask them if they would prefer to stay on our short call list.

We also use the Short Call Report for patients who do not schedule the next hygiene appointment because we do not have a time available that will work for them. In SoftDent, we create a short call tickler card and indicate in the notes when the patient is available. This replaces the manual list of patients to call, that all offices keep, in an attempt to fill open time.

To print the Short Call Report in SoftDent click on:

• “Reports” on the toolbar
• “Recall/Appointment
• “Short Call List”

This report will list all patients with and without appointments in your “Short Call Tickler File”.

By utilizing both of these suggestions your staff will not only keep your hygiene schedule full, but your office will look incredibly organized in the eyes of your patients.