When patients cancel their appointments last minute (or don’t show up), it affects your bottom line and weakens practice efficiency. By using NextGen Office to create and implement new policies that encourage patients to adhere to scheduled appointments, you’ll be able to capitalize on the revenue you were expecting and provide the level of care the patient needs.
NextGen Office - Hidden Benefits beyond the Chart
NextGen Office is an award winning, cloud based EHR that has a well deserved reputation for being a fast and easy charting solution that allows busy providers to focus their time and attention on the patient and not the EHR. But NextGen Office also includes powerful tools to help you grow practice revenue and protect your bottom line by implementing a scheduling policy.
Four Helpful Tips to Get you Started
Tip #1: Create a policy for appointment no shows and cancellations.
Include the reason you’re initiating this policy
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Ensure it’s clear that the patient is responsible for fees—not the payer*
*Note: Medicaid patients cannot be charged these fees -
Decide and include the fee for no-shows and cancellations
Consider a tiered fee schedule
• First no-show is not billed
• Second no-show is billed
Consider the fee associated with no-shows and cancellations
• $25–$75 is a typical fee amount per MGMA
Define what is considered a no-show or cancellation
• Patients who arrive more than 30 minutes late without notifying practice
• Missing an appointment, but not following up to reschedule
• Patients must cancel appointments at least 24 hours in advance
Create contractual language to be used for patient consent
Tip #2: Educate office staff on why implementing this policy is necessary
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Provide your staff with helpful talking points so they can communicate this change to patients
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Ensure patient has signed agreement on file before charging
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Establish protocols
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Perform clinical review of patients to ensure safety
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Develop an escalation path for chronic no-shows and patients who don't pay
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Determine method of sending appointment reminders
Tip #3: Inform your patients about this new policy
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Inform your patients before the policy will go into place
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Ensure that patients understand their responsibility by signing an updated agreement annually
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Post this policy in multiple locations (i.e. patient portal,office, website, etc.)
Tip #4: Make appointment reminders work for your practice
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Ask your patients their preferred method of receiving appointment reminders
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Set up the patient’s chart to include the preferred method
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Ensure you have the patient’s correct phone number and email address
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Create a cadence for how often you’ll send reminders
How to Use NextGen Office Tools to Succeed
Now that you have a cancellation policy in place you can use awesome tools built into your NextGen Office to help you succeed. Here's how:
How to identify the cost of no-shows and cancellations from NextGen® Office Generate an Appointment No Show Cancellation Report
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From the Dashboard, Reports>Report Type = Appointment
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Report Name = No Show and Cancellation
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Run a Practice Performance Report
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Multiply the totals from the above to determine the cost of the no shows
How to identify how many of your appointments are no-shows and cancellations
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Create an Appointment No-show and Cancellation report (use last year no-shows and total appointments)
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Divide the number of no-shows by the total number of appointments
Implement for Success
Now that you have your cancellation and no show policy in place and you understand how to use the powerful tools in your NextGen Office cloud based EHR you're ready to drive revenue and protect your practice's bottom line!
Can we help?
AVS Medical is a NextGen Office trusted business partner providing an additional level of customer care to our users at no additional cost. Click below to learn more!
