Are you also familiar with better late than never? It doesn’t sound good everywhere. While many of us run late once in a while, it wreaks havoc when it turns into a routine practice. In the healthcare sector, if a patient arrives late, it can seriously affect other patients, on-duty staff, and the schedules for the rest of the day. Managing chronically late patients reduces productivity and lowers staff morale.
No need to worry—patients can be trained to respect time and arrive on schedule. This article covers strategies to manage delays effectively. Let’s kickstart the journey of exploring smooth appointment scheduling and best practices for handling late patients.
Managing Patient Lateness with Effective Policies
Despite having precise appointment adherence policies for handling no-show patients, dealing with chronically late patients becomes an uphill battle. Late patients can throw off the entire schedule and affect the time slots physicians have fixed to spend with other patients. This domino effect can create a dent in your productivity and profit graph. On the other hand, declining to see a patient can be one of many solutions but at the same time, it can also be downright unethical. Let’s take the first step towards managing late arrival policy to enhance scheduling efficiency to minimize delays.
Forbes survey of 2019 revealed no-shows cost the US healthcare system above the US $150 billion a year. Adding more to this, every physician bears an average cost of US $200 per unutilized time slot.
Reasonable Grace Period
There should be a clear policy to have a certain grace period (e.g., 15 mins) and after a decided period, patients will be considered late. Set this for all the patients.
Set Clear-cut Expectations
Patients should be well informed about the office’s expectations for patient punctuality. No matter whether it’s a first visit or a registration process, brief the expectations in the form of a booklet or display on the official website.
Apply Consequences for Lateness
Strict consequences should be applied for chronic lateness. Patients should be aware of this office guideline for reaching late to appointments. For instance, after a certain number of patients, a late patient may be required to pay an extra fee, undergo a rescheduling process, or even be excluded from the practice.
Implement Reminders
A pertinent policy to avoid missed appointments is to assist patients in remembering their time with the doctor. Call, text and email reminders can help them. There are various automated systems to improve office workflow efficiency effortlessly.
Accommodate with Scheduling
Sometimes personal schedules clash with the appointments. Patients who find it hard to catch up in time can get an appointment that better suits their lifestyle. For example, evening or weekend appointments. This accommodating policy helps to strengthen patient relationships for better scheduling. Another way is to practice wait time management to balance the check-in process and patient wait duration.
Before you jumpstart to check out a brief policy sample, Statista 2024 survey revealed that 6 out of 10 adult patients in the US skip or delay medical appointments because of the cost fear.
Let’s view a sample policy for late patients.
Policy Items
List of Brief Description:
- Patients are expected to arrive in the nick of time for their appointments.
- A grace timeframe is allotted 15 mins.
- The chronic lateness consequences include a late fee charge for three instances of late arrival beyond the grace period, rescheduling of appointment after five instances, and even being discharged from the practice after seven times.
- Automated reminders via call, text or email 24 hours before the appointment with the physician will be sent.
- Patients who are tired of struggling with punctuality can request appointments that best synchronize with their schedule.
This list of sample policies should be communicated to all the patients to understand the importance of punctuality for appointments.
Doctor's Role in Establishing Punctuality Standards
If you think there is a one-size-fits-all approach, it doesn’t work this way. Other than office policies, medical providers have also an integral role to play in setting punctuality protocols. When patients notice the provider consistently runs against the time, it automatically sets a precedent for them to practice the same.
- Essential for providers to manage the time efficiently for time slot optimization.
- Building buffer time into the appointment calendar provides an extra cushion for unexpected delays.
- Adjustment of flexibility without derailing the rest of the day’s schedule.
- Implementation of state-of-the-art technology works as a vital factor in maintaining timeliness.
- The front desk staff training enables them to effectively use healthcare practice management software.
- It provides effective front desk automation solutions such as streamlining automated scheduling, data entry and tracking of appointment duration.
- A data-driven approach ensures more accurate time allocation for every patient with the physician.
Healthcare providers’ role is irrefutably significant but a baffling American Hospital Association report publishes those 3.6 million patients forego medical care each year. It increases the no-show number with more workflow disruption.
Clear Communication to Handle Patient Lateness
Communication fills various gaps and adds grace to the medical sector. Chronically late patients need a complete understanding of the impact of lateness on the workflow. The health provider might need to undergo a deeper dialogue about their tardiness. Clear-cut patient communication tackles the late patient situation in the following ways.
- This evokes the significance of arriving at the venue on time to attend the appointment.
- Discussion about potential barriers that prevent the patients from attending the appointment on time.
- Communication helps to brainstorm strategies to overcome these obstacles.
Importance of Pre-authorization
Healthcare insurance companies require your medical physician to obtain a prior authorization (PA), often pronounced as ‘’pre-authorization’’. It is normally utilized before covering a medical prescription, device, or procedure. Some patients need same-day appointments due to medical complications or other specific reasons, so it is easy to improve appointment flow with pre-authorizations. Prior authorization has an integral role to play in the healthcare of patients.
- Budget-friendly care
- Reduced administrative burden
- Optimized cash flow
- Higher patient satisfaction
Significance of an Optimized Overbooking Strategy
Overbooking appointments might seem like a precise, logical and even profit-driven solution in terms of dealing with chronically late patients. This idea means that if a patient is on a delay list and some other is waiting in the queue, the healthcare provider can examine another patient who is already on time. While it may appear a quick fix, it often culminates in more troubles than it solves. Overbooking appointments can cause serious disruption to the routine workflow in various ways.
- It leads to longer waiting duration for all patients, not only the late ones.
- Stir the waves of dissatisfaction among punctual patients.
- Puts unwanted stress on the healthcare providers who have to manage overbooking.
- Its meltdowns the profit level and impacts the staff performance.
Not overbooking appointments might seem like a turbulent situation, but the implementation of certain strategies can help manage this.
Apply Appointment Reminders
Regular reminders via call, text or email before the appointment day help patients avoid the chances of being late or not showing up on the actual day.
Strict Policy for Cancellation
There should be a clear-cut policy for patients to cancel their scheduled appointments timely if they cannot make it on the decided day. It enables healthcare providers to utilize the open-up slots for patients without undergoing overbooking.
Schedule Buffer Times
It means to leave some duration in between appointments to manage any unforeseeable delays. Keep the entire schedule intact even if the patient is not on time.
Handling chronically late patients is a challenging struggle. By pushing the envelope in the form of a balanced policy, effective communication and understanding, it is flexible to achieve the balance. This insightful article defines clear guidelines, technology influx and open dialogue to spot the healthcare practices. It provides a way forward to improve patient punctuality without compromising the treatment quality.