When patients miss appointments, they interrupt the flow of patient care, impede clinic productivity, and signal an eroding patient loyalty. The rate of no-shows runs at thirty percent for the average family practice. A missed appointment amounts to missed billing revenue. Worse, if the clinicians are part-time or full-time staff rather than contracted, they sit idle on the company clock, losing money with each passing minute. Finally, a missed appointment could be a symptom of a deserting patient, signaling a potential loss of long-term billing revenue.

Reminder calls for upcoming appointments and follow up calls on recent no-shows are effective strategies for billing revenue protection because they reduce numbers of no-shows and help early identification of incipient patient attrition and other patient relationship problems. Vendors of reminder call services quote no-show reduction rates of fifty percent. They also mention comparable improvement of long-term patient loyalty. Other no-show reduction strategy components include charges for missed appointments, no-show statistics analysis, and overbooking.

While recognizing the benefits of reminder calls, busy practice owners often neglect or postpone reminder and follow up calls because of other office management priorities, such as personnel issues or billing. As with any other management initiative, to get results, reminder call strategy must be implemented systematically and consistently.

Reminder call automation delivers the benefits of billing revenue protection and patient relationship management in a disciplined and systematic fashion and at significantly lower cost. Successful implementation of reminder call automation depends on technology and require: