Building A Better Business
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Building A Better Business

There aren't many things more difficult than building a business from the ground up. In addition to focusing on bringing in new customers and keeping business deals alive, you might also be stressed about keeping things young, current, and profitable. I started working at my parent's business several years ago, and it really paid off down the road when experience started to come in handy. This blog is here to help you to build a better business, keep your employees employed, and to impress your customers each and every single day you keep the doors open. Check out these posts for more information.

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Building A Better Business

3 Tips To Reduce Missed Appointments In Your Medical Office

Dennis Jenkins

One huge source of frustration for those in the medical industry is dealing with missed appointments. If you work in a healthcare setting and are dealing with a lot of missed appointments, you might be wondering which steps you can take. Luckily, following these tips can help with this issue.

1. Give Your Patients Options

The truth is that not all appointment times are convenient for all patients. Some people have more flexible schedules, such as those who are retired or who work in certain fields, while others might have a more difficult time making certain appointments due to their jobs, their kids, or other responsibilities. If you give your patients as many options as possible, you can help ensure that their appointments are convenient for them. This can help reduce no-shows and can help with patient satisfaction, too.

2. Call and Give Reminders

In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it's not uncommon for some people to just downright forget about their appointments. This is why it's smart to call and give reminders to your patients a day or two before they are supposed to show up at your office. This can be labor-intensive, but there are ways of making the process easier, such as using appointment booking software. You may even be able to set up your system so that your office phones will call patients automatically to remind them of their appointments. Alternatively, you can try sending patients emails or text messages, or you can send them reminder postcards in the mail a week or so before their appointments.

3. Charge for Missed Appointments

Missed appointments cost your office money, since a patient who doesn't show up is often taking a time slot from someone who would have. One good way to help recover some of these costs and to help discourage patients from skipping their appointments is to charge patients who just don't show up. However, you will probably want to give patients a window in which they can cancel, free of charge, to help prevent complaints and to keep things as fair as possible.

As you can see, there are steps that you can take to reduce missed appointments in your medical office. If you have found that this has been a big problem in your office, or if you simply want to prevent it from becoming a big problem, consider implementing some or all of these tips.


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