Do they get an unusual number of no-shows?
It seems like my dentist, my primary care physician, my ophthalmologist, etc. all want me to confirm via phone, text or email, that I am actually going to show up for the appointment that I just made with them a week or so ago. It’s off putting and wastes my time. I have found that I just ignore the confirmation requests.
How about you?
Becuase they do get a number of no shows.
And they turned away patients for that time slot that now they are paying an employee to stand around and do nothing.
Missed appointments cost the dentist, doctor, or groomer (in my case) money.
Having clients miss appointments is very off putting, wastes my time, and my money, and wastes the time of another client that could have taken your spot.
I call all of my clients the day before unless they made their appointment within a couple days. Most don’t call back, a few do, and a few answer the phone. Most clients are fine with this, but there are a few who do not respond, and don’t show up. Those are the ones that I tell need to actually confirm their appointment, or I will give it to someone else.
A number that used to be surprising to me forgot about the appointment, and either would not have showed up if I hadn’t called, or they just now realized that they wouldn’t make that appointment time, and need to reschedule.
I would say that if I didn’t do reminders, my no show rate would go from about 10% to as much as 50%. That’s a bit more of a hassle than getting an occasional call from a business that you are planning to patronize.
I assume it’s as much of a reminder as anything. People forget, get busy, etc and don’t show up.
For offices that reserve the right to charge for missed appointments, it provides them cover for doing so since they made a legitimate effort to remind you and confirm that you are, in fact, supposed to arrive.
I forget many times so I need it.
They have so many people who need to get in quick that with a few hours notice, they can call them to see if any can come at the newly opened slot. This works for me as I am no longer working a job.
Ups the doctors productivity and per day income stream.
Other stuff I can’t remember right now.
You ignore the confirmation request??
Don’t do this. Please confirm the appointment. To ignore the request because it’s “off putting” – I can’t believe I’m reading this. “Off putting”?? How can you be taking such a request personally? “Waste of your time”?? It takes two seconds! They do it because people don’t show up. Really.
I can’t believe you just ignore these requests.
Many professionals that I deal with do this-- my hairdresser, massage therapist, acupuncturist, and yes, all of the many doctors it has been my fate to see since I was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. The docs do it with an automated phone call; the others with a text message.
Just confirm, okay. Don’t make life harder in this already difficult world.
In my case, so many employer-provided insurance plans have instituted this thing where you need to get a physical and submit a form by March 31 of every year or else your deductibles and co-pays will increase. as a result it’s been a lot harder to get an appointment before that deadline, to the point where this year I’m going to probably need to call them in December if I want to get an appointment before the end of march.
My dentist sends an email reminder weeks before and unfortunately the only choices are:
No, I won’t make it
It’s on my calendar but remind me again a few days before
Look, if it’s on my calendar AND I am responding affirmatively, I don’t need another reminder a few days before! The only reason I would miss it is an emergency the day of, and asking me to confirm a few days before won’t help with that.
I don’t mind confirming once, but this is overkill.
I agree it can get to be mildly annoying overkill. Why do most offices do it? IMO/IME it’s because that’s a cost-free option in their scheduling app to send out text / email / automated VRS reminders.
As the customer, it behooves me to realize that medical folks in particular are all about high utilization. They want to process, say, 8 patients per hour. If they have a historical 25% no-show rate they will pretty soon be scheduling 10 per hour expecting 8 to show up. Which means some days all 10 will show up and they’ll be two hours behind by 3pm when my appoint comes around.
It’s in *my *interest that all the *other *irresponsible louts show up so that my doc doesn’t engage in much defensive over-scheduling that reduces the predictability of *my *wait time.
All of this is a simple and predictable consequence of being surrounded by people who behave like selfish idiots in what’s really a group setting. Everything you do everywhere affects everybody around you. Get used to it.
My dentist does this too, and I do it with some of my more problematic clients.
The reason that they send it a week or more before is so that they can fill the timeslot easier if you need to cancel.
They then contact you the day before, to make sure that something hasn’t come up, and while they have less time at that point, they can still probably get your appointment filled if you now need to cancel.
If they are not finding out that you are cancelling until after your appointment time, it’s pretty much impossible to fill the slot, and they simply have to eat the cost of paying employees to stand around and not work on you.
The reason that people do these things is not to annoy you, it’s because if they don’t do these things, then they go out of business because of the number of people who don’t show up to their appointments.
Whaddya mean “now” want you to confirm?
This has been happening to me my entire adult life, and I’m sure it happened in the '80s when I was still living with my parents too.
There’s been more than one occasion where either my husband or myself were able to utilize the time slot of someone who had cancelled the day before when we needed to get into to see a medical type. So if you tell them you’re NOT coming someone else can use that time slot.
And yeah, this has been SOP for decades in my life. I don’t see what the big deal is.
I don’t mind the reminders, but I hate when they text me - I have a cheapie flip phone, so replying just to say “yes” is a bit of a pain.
I try to remember to use the Outlook appointment reminder at work or at home, depending on where I expect to need reminding of the appointment.
Probably of because of “no show” clients. They just want to save their precious time that’s it.
Seriously, no-shows are a huge problem and a big expense.
My s/o is a massage therapist and no-call no-shows at one practice drove him to quit (just ahead of losing his sanity.) Imagine dressing for work on short notice, 30-min drive, prep work, and then no client and no pay and a drive home. A text reminder system and tighter cancellation policies might have saved him some agony (he wasn’t the boss.) And these are people with disposable income or ouchy medical issues who purposely booked short-notice appointments and then couldn’t be bothered to show up. Grrr.
And from a hospital-system perspective - if you don’t show, some person who is sicker or who has had to wait for an appointment has just been screwed over.
So short answer - people are assholes, that’s why.
strange that anyone would get upset over reminders of appointments.
What other small things upset you ?
I appreciate the reminders because once in a while I do forget, especially 6-month or annual appointments. My iPhone has a bad tendency to drop appointments from my calendar.
The clinic I visit every week at the same time doesn’t call to remind me. However, for my last visit to the dentist, I got three reminder calls. I complained to the dentist’s receptionist and was told that they pay a service to make the calls.
The company who abuses confirmation calls is Comcast. My service is disrupted a lot, requiring a technician to come to my home. Comcast’s policy is that an adult must be available for phone confirmations prior to the appointment. If the call isn’t answered, the appointment is cancelled.
Last appointment, I got three confirmation calls in the 24 hours before my appointment. If I had failed to answer any of them, I would’ve lost my appointment. There are times when I cannot answer the phone (driving, in the shower, medical appointment).
It seems that Comcast is really looking for an excuse to cancel customer appointments. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. They’ll have to come eventually, but now they’ve got an irate customer.
I hate Comcast.
In my experience, they don’t actually want me to confirm with them. They’re confirming with me. In other words, it’s just a reminder. Plus, if you answer the phone, it gives you a chance to say “oh yeah, forgot about that, I double booked, sorry I can’t make it” without forgetting and being charged as a no-show. But usually I just ignore the call and they leave a message. It has never been an issue.
OP, are you sure they aren’t just reminding you of the appointment? I mean, if you ignore them and they still see you it’s not like they required a confirmation from you to keep your appointment. I think these are mostly just helpful reminder calls, and if you get to say “yep, still planning on being there” or “woops, can’t make it now, sorry”, that’s just gravy on the cake.
Basically, think of it as a friendly reminder which also gives you the final chance to confirm or deny the appointment, rather than a nagging request to repeat something that was already settled on weeks ago.
If a doctor had one no-show per day, a patient could just show up without an appointment and wait until there was a no-show. But apparently, that doesn’t happen. Go into any doctor’s waiting room and look around, and ask yourself what are the chances that the doctor will sit there at any time and twiddle his thumbs waiting for the next patient. There is a reason why waiting rooms have 30-40 chairs and a big screen TV.
I consider it a courtesy that my doc calls me and reminds me the day before an appointment, because missing an appointment and having to rebook a week or two later is a worse inconvenience to me than a no-show is for the doctor. In fact, I was scheduled for an annual on Marrch 22, and a few days before they called to rebook me because the doc would be away, and I couldn’t be rescheduled until April 11.
The doctor’s offices (all at the same big practice, fwiw) just have an automated messaging system; whether you answer or let it go to voicemail, it’s just a recording (“you have an appointment scheduled with Dr. ___ on this day at this time; if you need to cancel, please call 785-xxx-xxxx”).
My dentist’s office, though, has the receptionist making calls in person, and she REALLY wants to talk to you. If the call goes to voicemail, she instructs you to call her back to confirm the appointment. She starts calling a week beforehand, and will call every day until she speaks to you. I’ve never let it go more than a couple of days without calling her back, but my understanding is that if you never confirm, your appointment time is subject to being given away to an urgent case.
Let’s not confuse reminders with “please respond with a confirmation”. They are two different things.
A reminder is just that, a reminder to you that we have you scheduled for an appointment at this time. I get that and consider that a friendly service being performed by my doctor which also tangentially benefits him/her. If I somehow forgot about the appointment and now have a conflict I can call and reschedule.
A request for confirmation of an appointment that I made, is just plain stupid.