No the trend has shifted from reminders over the past year to “please respond to this email or text” or “please call us back to confirm your appointment”.
Reminders have been around for years.
That being said, I’ve not yet showed up for an appointment that I made, but didn’t confirm and they tell me that they cancelled my appointment because I didn’t confirm it.
My new PCP is booking 9 months out. Yes, I’d like a reminder, and I’m happy to confirm.
I’m careful about such appointments. The one time the dentist’s office thought they didn’t need to remind me is the one time I remember missing. I think the reminder is helpful if the appointment is far in advance.
These aren’t social activities. You’re not being given reminder or confirmation calls for a dinner party, in which case you’d be in the right for getting you feathers ruffled; however, this is business. Different settings, different rules. In business, the market determines the rules, not people’s feelings. If the market is being upset by no-shows, then it makes perfect sense to try to eliminate no-shows. Reminder calls were the first attempt to eliminate no-shows. Apparently that didn’t work well enough, because the next step was to ask for acknowledgement of the reminder call.
I still keep a paper calendar, so I write everything down, and don’t need reminder calls, but some people put things in their phones, and conflicts don’t always show up-- my husband’s phone lets him schedule a reminder tone for up to a year ahead of time, but the calendar only displays two months, so if he books something three or four months ahead, he had to go through his scheduled tones after the first of each month and write in the next month of appts. It’s the free app that comes with the phone. He could probably get a better one if he paid for it, but he could also get a paper calendar, which my brain just processes better.
Anyway, I DO take advantage of cancellations: I have made last-minute appts. because someone disconfirmed an appt.
Hrm? What are all those focus groups for??!
It’s inevitable, when a certain percentage of folks don’t do the right thing and call to cancel when they are unable to make an appointment. I agree it’s annoying. The robo-calls left on the machine don’t hurt anything.
People say it’s inevitable, yet other people talk about how they just get reminders (as do I).
The issue I have is that this seems to be a solved problem. If they don’t cancel, you charge them even if they didn’t show up. Generally you give an amount of time they need to cancel by, generally 24 hours in my experience. And you do allow waiving the fees if they can prove a real emergency.
At least that’s my experience. Not calling me and telling me I have to confirm. That seems to make more work for the patient without any real benefit. You’d get paid either way.
Of course, as should be obvious, I only have experience as a patient and not a doctor. I’m only saying why I don’t understand this practice.
Here in the UK, I get automatic text reminders with details of how to cancel if I need to, rather than a request to confirm: it can be mildly irritating, since appointments aren’t usually that far in advance, so the reminder 48 hours before the appointment may come not much longer after I made it, and I’m usually organised enough to have put a reminder on my phone anyway. But it’s pretty minor as irritations go.
I suppose it’s all a matter of judgment for them as to whether any particular method reduces no-shows and time-wasters. Suggestions are periodically revived that there should be a charge if you fail to turn up to an appointment, but successive governments always shy away from the idea - not least because the doctors themselves tend not to be too keen on the idea, and it’s probably not worth the political row.
I know folks have chided the OP already, but FFS…First World Problems or what??
You have access to the best medical care in the whole world, and you’re irritated that they want you to confirm a fucking appointment? An appointment that those in most parts of the world would be nigh on impossible to get for most people??
S’cuse me while I go have a drink of water from a real tap, with safe water, and then go have a crap in a real toilet without having to use my hand to wipe my arse!
Fnark
Most health insurance won’t pay for no-show appointments. And most patients won’t pay bills for services they don’t actually receive.
Some of us are honest enough to admit we goofed & pay our library book fines. Apparently many people aren’t. So a provider trying your tactic is simply creating an uncollectible bill or *de facto *firing the patient. Not sound business when less costly and less drastic solutions can be tried first. i.e. reminders.
The collective cost of our collective assholishness is huge. Truly huge. This is just one more drop in that very large bucket.
My dentist has an interesting approach to no shows. She has a $75 “paperwork/new record fee” for new patients, which she typically waives. If you no-show/no-call she drops you from her active patient list. To be reinstated, there is the $75 fee, which is not waived.
Some people will not mind paying for a no show, I am sure.
But nearly everyone else does.
I tried penalizing people for no shows early on, that was a mistake, it just created some bad will and lost me some clients. They did not seem to care that I had turned away other clients to keep their appointment open, that I had employees to pay to stand around, that their action directly cost me money.
So being persistent about reminders, and scheduling problem clients in non-critical times (like afternoons, if you don’t show up then I can just send people home early) saves me quite a bit of money and hassle. Trying to get people to pay for missed appointments just makes everyone angry.
I have considered doing exactly that, as there are quite a number of people that have issues showing up for an appointment they just made.
I’ll have someone call in the morning, and forget abut their appointment by 1pm. I’ll have someone call in the evening, and forget about their appointment by their scheduled 8am appointment the next day. There are sometimes when it’s even stupider than that, when they will call at 10, make an appointment for 11, then forget. They call back in the afternoon, wanting to reschedule.
They don’t know the difference between you and someone who will not show up for their appointment, and making assumptions like that could get them into trouble. It’s easiest to just have a blanket system, and have everyone get reminded.
My wife is a physical therapist. Her smallish office of 2 full time and one part time PT’s averages 1-2 no shows/no calls PER DAY. That means 30 minutes to 2 hours of down time for a PT, depending on the appointment type, since people without an appointment don’t just drop in to the PT office and wait for an opening. There’s no such thing as “emergency PT”. Overbooking is a heinous option that results in long waits and makes no one happy.
They must do everything possible to remind and encourage people to keep their appointments, or they go out of business. It’s that simple - and if it weren’t a real problem you wouldn’t get confirmation requests.