The Patient Experience Blog

Why do patients "no show" for consultations? Of course there are true emergencies and busy, forgetful people... but human error can't entirely account for the very high no show rates that occur in some plastic surgery practices. 

If you're having problems with too many no shows, look at these 4 areas of the process:

1. Call quality

How much time is spent with the patient on the telephone? Are all calls approached as a potential surgery? Do you always quote prices over the phone and provide information about financing?

2. Appointment availability 

When is the next available appointment? Do you keep a waiting list? If so, how do you determine which patient gets scheduled in which appointment spot when there is a cancellation?

3. Marketing materials

What materials do you send to patients? Do the materials look first class and are they up to date? When the materials mailed or emailed, are the materials followed-up by a phone call to make sure they were received?

4. Appointment confirmation 

When you don't reach the patient to confirm, what is said during the call? This is truly a "marketing opportunity" for the practice.

It's not just you...

No shows truly are a reality for all plastic surgery practices.  EVERYONE has them, don't let them fool you.

Do you understand the correlation between your front desk staff and your surgery schedule? According to patient feedback 21% more patients 21% more patients (68%) are highly likely to schedule with the assistance of a knowledgeable staff.  While patients who are just satisfied with the knowledge of the staff are only 47% highly likely to schedule.

What to do?

• Take the time and opportunity to educate your staff about your procedures.
• Schedule Lunch ‘n Learn sessions once a month.
• Each session should focus on one procedure.
• Review the ins and outs, techniques, patient objections and recuperation time.
• Use your before and after book to educate your staff on patient selection
• Staff should read the procedure brochures

The time you invest in your staff will create a win/win situation for everyone.

Highly satisfied patients are 33% more likely to return for additional services. 

Does your practice have a communication protocol for post-op patients? It really matters.

1. Add proactive follow up calls between early post-op office visits.
2. Implement procedure-specific follow-up communication to ensure that patients’ recovery needs are met. 
3. Recall patients for post-op photography. This is a win-win for both of you. You gain the valuable pictures for future patients and ensure patient satisfaction.
4. Add patients to your eblast list to keep them informed about practice promotions.
5. Resend survey invitations to patients 4 months after surgery

Sample letter

Dear April,

Just a reminder to redeem your $25 coupon from our office.

You recently received an invitaiton to complete an anonymous survey from Real Patient Ratings, with a $25 coupon toward any service or product at our practice. If you didn't receive the survey, call us and we'll send it to you again.

Double it: Use your $25 toward Botox or any filler and we'll double it to $50!

Word clouds are a great tool for understanding what’s important to your patients.

Here’s an example:

From the dashboard, we exported the comments report into a plain text file and then copied the words into the free word cloud tool on Wordle.net. The size of the word represents the frequency with which it is used. For this practice, feeling “comfortable” is highly valued by their patients.

What can you do with a word cloud?

• Blog about the things you do to make patients comfortable
• Add graphic to your website on your RPR comments page
• Send the graphic as a post-consult touch point
• Have in-service with your staff about words that are important patients
• Create a post card of this graphic and use it to write notes to patients