Chris Mullins

When a patient does not keep their appointment it costs you financially. Carefully crafted and enforced no-show policies can help toward decreasing no-shows. The policy samples below come from dental practices and you can tailor these ideas to fit your situation. I also offer ways to "Mullins-ize" your business in the second half of this Cheat Sheet.

• We send a letter after the first no-show or last-minute cancellation reaffirming the policy. We charge $75 on the second offense and are prepared to not see that patient if he/she does not pay. We do in-person and electronic calling.

• We charge a modest nonrefundable appointment set-up fee applicable to the eventual bill.

• After the first missed appointment the patient is billed $50 for each half hour that was scheduled. This is accompanied by a "courtesy for missed appointment," this way the patient knows what's going to happen if it happens again.

• We make our $50 missed appointment fee known at the start of the relationship and explain we schedule only one patient at a time. The next time, the person is charged and won't be seen if the bill isn't paid. We also use an electronic reminder system. This helps with no-shows or late arrivals and sends an automatic SMS to the patient two days before an appointment.

In addition to enforcing no-show policies, it's important to look inside your relationship-building efforts with all patients? Is each team member delivering the same WOW customer service experience to every patients? How's the phone being handled? Are you using a script and smiling? Have you been Mullins-ized? Have you expressed the importance of the appointment to the patient? Did you include a verbal contract at the end of the call to confirm the appointment?

Pay attention to the trends:

• Whose appointments are being missed?
• What type of appointments? (14)

Investigate and diagnose the problem area. Do you see patients on time? How far out are you scheduling appointments? Look at your no-shows for the last three months. Look at every detail: day of the week, the person your patient is seeing, the front desk, insurance, gender, geographic, time of appointment, new patient, established, etc.

To schedule a FREE mystery call to see how your office is doing email me at chris@mullinsmediagroup.com and put Curve Dental in the subject line. 

More About Mullins Media Group... 

J. Breck McGill, DDS

Wouldn't it be great if you could have all of the business management details done without a worry? You wouldn't wonder if all of the;

• Primary and secondary insurance claims were submitted
• Overdue accounts receivable were contacted with chart notations
• Recall efforts were completed
• New patients received a welcome letter and did all those that referred receive a thank you
• Appointments were confirmed
• Did the backup get run and taken off site
• And did the Daysheet get balanced along with the preparation of the nightly deposit

I used to struggle with this one in my office. Finally I came upon a concept that was so simple. Do it once! Do it once caused us to sit down and talk through what needed to be done every day in the front office. We came up with what we nicknamed the Cookbook Calendar. Much like a cookbook, the ingredients for our success were laid out in detail and placed on a weekly calendar. We blueprinted the ideal week after brainstorming on what we needed to accomplish in week 1 of any month and then week 2 and so on. What were our priorities for those tasks and who was going to be responsible for each specific task? This eliminated any cause for hurt feelings or miscommunication between staff members on who was going to do what and when. From then on the cookbook calendar was printed each week (week 1, week 2, etc.) and placed in an inconspicuous area at the front. As items were completed they were simply checked off by those responsible.

The real beauty of this effort was I didn't have to wonder if essential tasks were getting the attention they needed. I could simply look at the printed cookbook calendar and visually see what was done and what was pending. The staff was now free from micromanagement and felt truly empowered to succeed.

Another benefit occurred when any member of the team was ill. It wasn't hard to see what had been done and what yet needed to be accomplished. Still another benefit occurred when we hired someone new. They immediately knew what was expected of them and could be coached on learning those specific tasks first.

So if you want to cook up the ideal week .....put your heads together and develop your own cookbook for success and reduce the stress!

More About Clarity Dental Consulting...