Missed appointments can have a serious impact on a radiology business and lead to poor patient outcomes. Recent surveys have shown that up to 42 percent of patients skip appointments, and according to new research published in Current Problems in Diagnostic Radiology, there is more uncaptured revenue per patient visit in radiology than in primary care or other medical specialties.

There are various reasons why a person may fail to show up for an appointment, including the cost of medical care, insurance issues, lack of time, poor communication between the patient and their medical provider, poor medical literacy, or forgetfulness. When a patient fails to show up for an appointment, the radiology practice and patient are negatively impacted in multiple ways.

From the cost of the visit to ordering imaging exams, revenue is lost every time an appointment is missed. In some cases, staff do preparatory work in advance such as insurance authorization, scheduling time, and protocoling—wasting time and resources before the patient even misses the appointment. No-shows can also impact staff morale and productivity. Delayed patient care is the third main impact of a missed appointment. Both the no-show patient or those who could have taken the appointment lose out on the opportunity to receive medical care they need.

To decrease the frequency of no-shows, there are different solutions radiology practices can implement. A tracking and appointment reminder system that sends out alerts to patients via text message, email or phone asking them to confirm can help minimize the impact of missed appointments. For “at-risk” patients that are more likely to be no-shows, it can be helpful to increase the frequency of their appointment reminders leading up to the day of their appointment. If the problem is particular pronounced in a clinic or office, adhering to a late cancellation/no-show policy that includes fines can be effective. Finally, predictive analytics that look into a patient’s past history to calculate probability models on the likelihood of a no-show will start playing an increasingly important role. It will be important for practices to communicate the policy to patients every time they make an appointment to decrease the number of missed appointments.

Using a Quality Management System (QMS) can play an important role in the day-to-day processes of a healthcare environment, and help support patients and their needs over time. Benefits include minimizing patient waiting lines by offering web-based check-in, statistics, live reports and real-time data that help medical centers evaluate their performance and services so they can improve their services in the future, and communication tools to streamline conversations between the radiology provider, patients, and referring doctors.

Within Health is building the next generation patient engagement solution for radiology groups. The platform identifies patients that require care, and automates patient and provider engagement taking a multi-channel approach (e.g. e-mail, text). The platform ultimately closes the loop on missed exams with integrated e-prescription and scheduling workflows with appointment reminders.

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