Patient no-shows and cancellations continue to be the largest barrier preventing dental practice schedules from reaching full capacity this year.
Dental practice appointment schedules have remained largely unchanged month over month this year, reaching 88 percent fullness in June, according to a survey from the American Dental Association. When asked what was preventing schedules from reaching 100 percent capacity, 81.3 percent of dentists said patient no-shows and cancellations less than 24 hours beforehand were responsible. About 42 percent of dentists said patient cancellations more than 24 hours before the appointment prevented full schedules.
Five dentists recently spoke with Becker's about whether patient no-shows and cancellations were affecting their practice.
Note: Responses were lightly edited for length and clarity.
Manny Chopra, DMD. Center for Dental Health (Cincinnati): Our dental practice has been facing challenges with patient cancellations and no-shows, impacting our overall daily operations. These cancellations have resulted in decreased productivity as appointment slots go unfilled. This situation has also affected our ability to provide timely treatments to our patients. To overcome these issues, we are actively working on implementing patient reminder systems, improving scheduling training and pursuing better communication with our patients to encourage more consistent appointment attendance.
Rachel Espinoza, DDS. (Colorado, Springs, Colo.): For a time, we did have a string of no-shows. However, this has been mitigated with a flexible deposit policy prior to scheduling appointments longer than sixty minutes. As for actually scheduling appointments, it has been difficult to keep the doctors fully booked. Production has definitely taken a dip since May of this year.
E. M. Ferneini, DMD, MD. Associate Clinical Professor at the Quinnipiac University Frank H Netter MD School of Medicine (North Haven, Conn.) and Associate Clinical Professor at the University of Connecticut (Storrs): My practice has actually not had many issues with cancellations or no-shows. My staff confirms patient appointments and our surgeries are always confirmed 48 hrs before the procedure.
Peter Lucchese, DDS. Hudson Valley Dental Arts (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.): The practice I am affiliated with has been experiencing cancellations, no-shows and a lack of follow-up to treatment plans on and off for the past six to nine months. New patients who have discomfort will make appointments and not show or cancel last minute. Personally, this has impacted me because I am compensated by percentage of production. The staff is bored because there are holes in the schedule, morale is down and we feel corporate does not listen or care about our office. Not sure of what their marketing plan is for our office.
Charles Rim, DDS. Oregon State Hospital (Salem): Frequent patient [cancellations] and no-shows will impact the anticipated revenue and staff morale, especially during difficult and uncertain economic times. The dental clinic [I am employed at] has no issue immediately filling the canceled appointments from the well-developed urgent dental referral process for patients in the hospital, especially after all daily appointments are reviewed by providers in the morning for any anticipated cancellations and no-show appointments. This process to fill the canceled appointment may not be attainable in the community setting or a different dental practice model. However, for any practice model to reduce patient no-show appointments is based on the self-evaluation of individual capacity utilization factors and effectiveness and efficiency of the service provided. The appropriate office policy standards need to be transparent, consistent and well communicated to all patients. Also, all team members must work together to achieve certain goals and understand each threshold to reduce factors affecting patient cancellations and no-shows.