How do you handle no shows?

"No shows" are patients with a scheduled appointment who don't show up.  There are two types of no shows. Those who call to cancel with less than twenty four hours and those who don't even call. When we get a no show who doesn't call we handle it one of two ways. If it is a patient who has been here before, my front desk person usually calls about 5 or 10 minutes into the appointment to find out what happened. Often the patient has a reason; they forgot , had a family emergency, or thought the appointment was on another day.  We make a note in their chart for each broken appointment  including the reason given .  If a patient repeatedly fails to keep their appointments we really would rather not bill them, instead we offer to have them participate in our short call program. We "understand" that they may have a busy life or busy work schedule that hasn't permited them to reliably keep their dental appointments. We ask them to call us on a day that they know that they have some free time and we will make an effort to get them in.

Some patients are not happy with this option and ask to continue to make regular appointments. We  let them know that if they do break these new appointments we will bill them for these "no shows". We explain (politely) that we schedule an hour for each dental appointment and our time has value. It is not fair for a patient to expect their dentist to put up with repeated broken appointments without incurring an additional fee.