Recently I casually meet with 14 other chiropractors from all over the US and the conversation moved towards what everyone agreed was the greatest yet most unnecessary cause of lost income in their practice today…
…Missed appointments and no shows.
What was surprising however was how almost no one actually realized how much income they were losing daily, weekly and monthly, even though the mathematics of this calculation are extremely straight-forward and simple.
My assumption is that sometimes it’s so much easier to bury our heads in the sand rather than face reality or the simple truths.
Anyway, I compiled some pretty amazing stats regarding this topic and I think you will find much of this interesting as you compare it to your own practice numbers.
I have written articles on this topic before however I have only relayed the experience within my clinics or a friend’s or client’s clinic. Although 14 chiropractors is not a perfect ‘sample size,’ the fact that they are very different clinics from all over the country makes it somewhat valid for most of us.
Here is what I uncovered:
Gross income per patient visit:
Range: $60 – $220
Avg: $90
Visits provided per day:
Range: 22 – 110
Avg: 45
Missed appointments/no shows per day:
Range 4 – 20
Avg: 8
After I informally gathered this information (more or less on a bar napkin) I proceeded to ask each doctor if they had a system in place for reworking and recapturing those missed appointments and no shows. Now, to my surprise everyone said they did have a system but, not to my surprise, most of these systems amounted to this:
“Call every missed appointment within 30 minutes of their appointment and if they don’t get rescheduled then put them on a list to be called at the end of the day or the following day.”
Okay, that’s not bad or at least it is better than nothing. However, after deeper probing, it was evident that many of the docs really did not even use their own ‘system’ fully or at least were not tracking it adequately.
In my experience working with doctors on managing missed appointments and M.I.A patients, I find that while most make an effort to reschedule the patients, they do it only once or twice and then move on.
In other words they don’t follow a ‘system.’ They tend to put more emphasis on finding the next new patient than they do in ‘managing’ those they have. And reactivating lost patients is simply part of that patient management.
So… to get back to the stats above, what are these missed appointments costing the doctors on average?
Average lost income per day: $720
Average lost income per week: $3,600
Average lost income per month: $14,400
Average lost income per year: $172,800
Pretty shocking when you put it down on paper.
And this is NOTHING compared to those docs that are seeing more visits per day or have a higher income per patient visit.
Think about it, if you could decrease that number just by ½ that is still a lot of retained income.
Point is, have a system, a STRONG system with ACCOUNTABILITY in place to track and follow up with every single missed appointment and no show. If you don’t, get one in place.
Consult with a colleague that has a great protocol in place or use The Ultimate Recall & Reactivation protocol we sell at SuccessfulChiro.
Either way, get this piece of your office puzzle in place and you will not only need less new patients to make the same amount of money but also will significantly boost your Patient Visit Average (PVA) income.
