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Charge fees where possible to curtail poor patient behavior (ex. surgical no-shows)

Reading Time - 2 min

 

Why you should spend 2 minutes reading this:

"Mis-behaving" patients impact your bottom line, physicians and other patients

 

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There’s a cost associated with behaviors. For example, if you had a patient scheduled for surgery and they do not show up here are some costs:

  1. Time is taken to get authorization, schedule the patient etc.

  2. Time lost not billing another surgery / helping another patient

  3. Frustration for the surgeon stemming from non-predictable schedules and impact to their bonus

 

You’ll need to exercise judgment on what behaviors you want to curtail and how you’ll do it. For instance, you could:

  1. Increase communication/reminders before the visit

  2. Send a courtesy letter after missing a visit

  3. Charge a monetary fee after missing a visit

  4. Refuse future care after missing X number of visits

 

In the end, what you want to ask yourself is:

  1. Which patients exhibit this behavior

  2. How much is it costing me

  3. If I try to curtail the behavior via a certain program, what will be the impact to my bottom line (this will stem from the difference between, the decrease in long-term cost from the decrease in long-term revenues as some patients may leave)

 

If patient behavior is costing you, fill out the form below and we can work on ways to decrease those costs. 

 

High-level actions you can take based on this article:

1. Identify what patient actions most negatively impact your operation

2. Develop new systems/processes to curtail those actions

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