Posts

George Konold

Physical Therapy Software | The Ugly Truth About Your No Show Costs

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Physical Therapy Software | Losing Money from NS and NFAAre you anxious about wasted time when patients don’t show up for their appointments at your physical therapy practice? No-shows (NS) and No Future Appointments (NFA) can certainly slow down your patient flow and rob you of the opportunity to help your patients get better. But they also affect the bottom line of your practice and diminish your profitability.

Even patients who don’t miss their appointments should always have a follow-up appointment scheduled to ensure care plan compliance and consistent patient flow for your practice. You should also keep in mind that you might have to return any payments received when a patient stops treatment. Naturally, you won’t be getting any referrals from patients who don’t get better, which further increase the amount of lost income due to NS and NFA.

It is important to know exactly how much income your practice is losing due to NS and NFA. If you replace the assumptions below with your own numbers you can calculate your estimated NS/NFA loss per month, just like in the following example.

Assumptions:

  • The average payment for one Patient visit is $89.00

Calculations:

  • Daily Cost
    Two no-shows per day cost you $178 per day:
    2 x $89 = $178

  • Weekly Cost
    Ten no-shows per week cost you $890:
    10 x $89 = $890

=> Annual Cost
In a year your loss of income is $46,280:

         52 x $890 = $46,280

You can reduce this lost income by taking action on all of your practice’s NS and NFA with bestPT’s scheduling and ticket system. Plus, you can view NS and NFA trends at a glance on your Radar Chart.  When you make sure all of your patients have another appointment scheduled, relationships improve and your practice grows along with your profits.

George Konold

Patient Compliance Management | No-Show Follow Up

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physical therapy software_patient-relationshiop-managementAre you worried about the high number of no-shows (NS) at your physical therapy practice? Your practice cannot grow or even generate a profit if too many of your patients fail to show up for their appointments. But even patients who don’t miss their appointments should always have a follow-up appointment scheduled to ensure care plan compliance and consistent patient flow.

When patients don’t complete their physical therapy care plans, their health fails to improve and they end up blaming you. You, on the other hand, miss an opportunity to help someone who is hurting and you are losing referrals, not to mention income.

You can improve your patient relationships by taking action when your patients don’t have any follow-up appointments scheduled or don’t show up. Of course, you are too busy to track No Shows (NS) and No Future Appointments (NFA). But with bestPT physical therapy software you do not have to memory-manage your staff or remember when to look up NS and NFA reports. bestPT creates alerts automatically and sends them to your staff’s work benches. You KNOW if they followed up on those alerts just by looking at your Radar.

physical therapy software_radar | patient retention

Radar Metric Description for date range June 2012 to July 2012:

  1. Daily No Future Appts: Patients who don’t have a future appointment scheduled need to be contacted to schedule their next appointment.
  2. No Shows: Number of patients who did not show up for their appointments.
  3. Total # of Practice Tickets: Total number of tasks that need to be taken care of by the practice staff
  4. New Patient: Number of new patients added to practice database.
  5. Patient Visits: Total amount of patient visits from June 2012 to July 2012.
physical therapy software_barbara-hirsch

Barbara Hirsch, Scheduling Manager

At Vericle, Scheduling Manager Barbara Hirsch uses bestPT’s scheduling and ticket system to manage appointments for SPOCs with their assigned practices or prospective clients. She tracks and reschedules NS, and contacts providers who don’t have a future appointment for a Monthly Health Health check scheduled with their SPOCs. Since a fast response time is crucial for successful action on NS and NFAs, Barbara prioritizes her tickets and maintains a backlog of zero. Her goal is to schedule or reschedule all appointments according to urgency by the end of the day.

Of course, she can’t handle the 115 or more daily scheduling tickets on her own and shares the responsibility with her team. But she can always tell when someone is not pulling her weight by looking at the SLA report, Radar or her Ticket Manager Console.

Just like Barbara, you and your practice staff can also take successful action on all of your practice’s NS and NFA with bestPT’s scheduling and ticket system. When you make sure all of your patients have another appointment scheduled, relationships improve and your practice grows along with your profits.

Watch this video to learn how to manage your NS and NFA with bestPT: