Failed Hygienists’ Appointments
Question:
We tend to fill our hygienist days but nearer the day, we can get quite a few cancellations and failed to attends. It does not always happen, but on some days we can have 2 or 3 gaps. Does this happen to everyone? Is it normal? Does anyone have any procedures in place to prevent it happening? The hygienist days seem to be much more affected by this than our other books!
Answer:
We have put together a leaflet on visiting the hygienist and add it to our recall letters, to inform people of the importance of the hygiene visits.
Answer:
Yes we also have this problem at our practice and we have started asking patients to pay for their hygiene visit in advance. We seem to have a lot less last minute cancels and FTAs.
Answer:
We have a private hygienist – so our patients get referred by our NHS dentist – we take a £20.00 deposit on the day they book, the balance of £20.00 is paid on the day – if they FTA we then keep the £20.00 and that goes to the hygienist .
If they cancel on the day we keep the £20.00 deposit again for the hygienist – if they cancel a few days before the appointment – we re book and move the deposit to that day.
Answer:
We have also faced similar problems with our hygienist appointments in the past.
In the end we had to change our policy and put up a note saying that we will be taking advance deposit on hygienist appointment. This has ensured that patient turn up on the day of the appointment. It has reduced the number of fta and short notice cancellations. Amazingly majority of the patients have taken this new policy very well. Also along with the change in payment policy we have also made our reminder system better.
Answer:
We have had a similar problem. We now book the check up appointment with the dentist and 15 mins later book the hygienist appointment so the patient sees both clinicians on the same day (this has made a huge difference in FTA/short notice cancellations). We also telephone all the remaining hygienist patients who do not have dual appointments the day before to remind them of their appointment time.
Answer:
This happens to us as well. Our hygienist is usually booked up for quite a few weeks, so we have a cancellation list. The receptionist phones people on the list, offering them the cancelled appointments. Also the nurses are made aware there are gaps, so that if they have a patient in who has been advised to see the Hygienist they can offer an appointment.
Answer:
We experience the same problem and we are confirming patients by telephone 2 days before their appointment and keep a very up to date standby list in case of any cancellations.
Answer:
We text our patients two days prior to their appointments, those without mobiles receive a reminder letter 1 week before. When I worked in a general practice we had a spate of this happening. We decided instead of calling the day before to confirm hygienist appointments, we would call the week before and then if anyone had a problem we had a chance to fill the space.
Having listened to Chris Barrow last night and the importance of gaining patient loyalty, we are toying with the idea of offering patients who are present in the practice at the time of the hygienists free time a “spa” type mouth treatment. I’ve asked our hygienists to work on a 15 minute appointment idea where the patient gets some nice polishing, a bit of OHI, discussions on the benefits of hygiene or other dental treatments. The patient selected needs to be a regular patient of the practice and this service would be free to them.
Answer:
We tell the patients that the Hygienist is the most important person in the practice as without gums there is no point the Dentist doing his fab work – sounds good but we still get the failures, etc.
Answer:
We confirm all our hygiene appts the day before. We ask for 48 hrs notice for cancellation but charge the full cost of appt if pt does not come. You could try asking for a deposit prior to appt. This is not foolproof but it has helped us.
Answer:
All our hygiene patients have to pay for appointment in advance on booking. Then if they short notice cancel or FTA they forfeit the fee and have to pay again. May seem a bit harsh but then you sift out the time wasters.
Answer:
We have this problem too, we do charge for late cancellations and also offer a 10% discount to patients on the day if they take a cancellation appt. This does work in our practice
Answer:
We had the same problem, and introduced a 48 hour cancellation fee of the full amount if after this time, that is unless they can move to another gap that week and then we do not charge. The treatment plan which is given when the booking is made states that there is the full charge for missed appointments with less than 48 hours notice.
