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What is your practice’s current no-show rate?
According to the Medical Group Management Association, single-specialty medical practices (combining primary care, nonsurgical, and surgical single-specialty practice) saw an average no-show rate between 5-7% over the last 5 years.
However, if you’re dealing with a no-show rate of over 20%, you’re far from alone. This is a struggle that a lot of cash-pay and DPC practices are coping with these days. And no shows in this sector aren’t just annoying, they’re expensive!
With that in mind, let’s take a look at what no-show appointments are really costing your practice and how you can take actionable steps to reduce them.
The most important thing to remember is that, for DTC or cash-pay businesses, these missed appointments are a 100% revenue loss, whereas a practice on an insurance-based model might still collect partial reimbursements.
How much are these last-minute cancellations really costing you?
If you’re a relatively small clinic with a single practitioner with a no-show rate of 10%, it would break down as follows:
However, things can escalate quickly. Let’s say your practice has 3 full-time physicians, you charge a bit more for appointments (we’ll use $250.00), and you have a no-show rate of 20%.
But that’s not all…
When you have an empty room, you need to remember how much money you invested in marketing, ads, and SEO to attract the patient who is supposed to be sitting in that room.
A no-show appointment basically drops the Return-on-Investment (ROI) of your marketing spend, wastes what you paid in Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and essentially raises that CAC for all future patients.
At the same time, your Patient Lifetime Value (LTV) projections are now going to fall short of what you anticipated.
We also need to factor in the impact this can have on your staff. A constant flow of no-shows can be demoralizing, as your high-paid physicians are now spending more of their day chasing down and following up with patients. That’s not the best use of their time, nor what they want to be doing. This can lead to lower morale, burnout, or even turnover.
Now that we’ve taken a deep dive into the true nature of the problem, we need an impactful solution.
The good news is that there are several simple strategies you can adopt to reduce your no-show numbers and keep them down. The even better news is that many of them are free or inexpensive.
If you’re not charging for missed appointments right now, you should consider starting. And if you’re already charging a fee, you might consider increasing it.
According to The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA)’s survey of 622 medical practice leaders:
Their data also shows that a simple fee between $25.00 and $75.00 is an effective deterrent.
Some practices will have a staff member reach out and call patients to remind them 24-48 hours before their appointment. That’s a great personal touch that will certainly help reduce no-show numbers, but not everyone has the time or staff to do that.
In the absence of the personal touch, you should consider SMS/text message reminders.
Text message reminders for appointments or medication refills are popular among both younger and older patients. For example, 85% of millennials like receiving appointment reminders via text, and over 50% are already receiving them from various providers. Meanwhile, 88% of surveyed Baby Boomers feel it’s important for healthcare teams to send them reminders about their medications.
How much of an impact can these reminders have on your no-show rate? One practice reduced its no-shows from a costly 20.99% to a far more acceptable 7.07% by introducing telephone reminders. Elsewhere, a vascular laboratory had a 12% no-show rate that was costing them $89,107 a year. They were able to cut that down to 5%, which increased their revenue by $51,769.00 a year.
Cerbo’s do-it-all EHR, practice management, and patient portal solution offers online scheduling, text message reminders, and supports integrations with your CRM. This can help you slash your no-show rates with no extra effort required.
“While it takes a while to customize Cerbo to fit your practice, it is well worth the investment and ultimately saves time and money. The best part is that this translates into successful patient outcomes while minimizing the burden of charting, educating, and day-to-day administrative tasks on the practice team.”
— Dr. Kristann Heinz, MD, RD, Red Hill Medical + Wellness, Pennsylvania.
