Playbook, medical practice
The patient wants to cancel. Is it even our appointment?
Two things make this awkward at a practice. A large share of the diary is telephone slots, which are windows in which somebody rings rather than times to attend, and a large share of the cancellation messages are about hospital appointments the surgery does not hold at all. Sorting those two out is most of the work.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for rescheduling and cancelling holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A telephone appointment is a window in which a clinician rings, not a time to be somewhere, so cancelling one and cancelling a face to face one are different requests and a patient who treats them as the same misses the call.
- Plenty of the cancellation traffic a surgery receives is about outpatient appointments booked by a hospital, because the referral letter came from this building and the patient has no other point of contact they trust.
- Where the appointment is commissioned there is no cancellation fee to quote, so the practice publishes a position on missed appointments instead, and the consequence is a conversation or a letter rather than a charge.
- The reminder text usually carries a reply code that releases the slot, which means the fastest route out of this question is already in the patient's pocket and pointing at it beats every other sentence available.
How it arrives
- how do i cancel my appointment
- can i cancel by replying to the text
- i missed the doctors call is that a dna
- i need to change my hospital appointment
- can i move my telephone appointment to the afternoon
- what happens if i dont turn up
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The reply code on your reminder text | The exact word or number a patient sends back, and what happens if they send it after the slot has started. Nobody memorises this and everybody has the message on their phone, so publishing it converts a phone call into a thumb press. |
|---|---|
| What a telephone appointment actually is | The length of the window, how many times a clinician tries, whether the number shows as withheld, and what happens if the patient misses the call. Written as an explanation, because the misunderstanding here is what generates the missed ones. |
| Your position on missed appointments, written plainly | What happens after one, what happens after several, and whether anybody is ever removed from the list. Say it without a threat in it, because a patient who fears the consequence stops telling you they cannot come. |
| Which appointments the practice does not hold | Hospital outpatients, community clinics, and any phlebotomy held on another site. Name them with whose number to ring, since a patient chasing the wrong building loses a morning and then rings you anyway. |
The reply
If you have had a reminder text from us, replying with the code in it releases the slot, which is the quickest way to do it [1]. A telephone appointment is a call back window rather than a fixed time, so if you know you cannot take a call that morning it is worth cancelling rather than hoping [2]. Appointments at the hospital are booked by them and changed on the number on your letter, not by us. I cannot see the diary or cancel anything from here.
It leads with the route the patient already has, since the text is in their phone and the reply costs nothing. It defines a telephone appointment rather than assuming the definition is shared, because that gap is what produces missed calls. The hospital sentence is volunteered before somebody spends an afternoon on the wrong switchboard.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor names a date they want moved, says they have missed several appointments, or asks whether cancelling will affect their registration.
I cannot change anything in the diary or see what you are booked for. Leave me your name, an email and which appointment you mean, and reception will pick it up.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say an appointment has been cancelled or moved, because nothing typed here reaches the appointment book.
- Never tell somebody it is fine to miss an appointment, since the clinician booked it for a reason that is not visible from here.
- Never state a charge for a missed appointment where the appointment is a commissioned one, because there is none and the threat teaches patients to say nothing.
- Never confirm what a named patient is booked in for, even to a caller who is cancelling on their behalf.
Questions
- Could it cancel if we connected the appointment system?
- No. It reads documents you give it and cannot write to anything, so a cancellation always ends at your reply code, your online route or the phone. What it removes is the call that only ever wanted to know which of those to use.
- Should it deal with hospital appointments at all?
- Only to say they are not ours and to name the route. That single sentence, published once, is worth more to reception than any other answer in this pair.
- Is our missed appointment policy worth indexing?
- Yes, if it is written without a threat in it. Patients ask because they are worried, and a calm description of what actually happens makes them more likely to tell you in advance rather than less.
Keep reading
- Everything for a medical practiceAdministrative questions a practice can safely automate, the symptom questions it must never touch, and how to word the refusal.
- Handling rescheduling and cancelling in generalNotice periods and charges are answerable. A specific booking is not. Hiding the policy produces complaints, not fewer cancellations.
- Referred in the spring, still nothing: what a practice can answerThe wait patients ask a practice about is usually one it cannot see. Referrals, the urgent route and what may honestly be said.
- Saturday afternoon, and the message is about a repeat prescriptionBank holiday prescriptions, hub appointments held at another surgery and the closed route. What to publish for the hours you are shut.
- The patient is in the right building and at the wrong deskA surgery often shares a building with other services. Reception desks, branch days, the blood clinic elsewhere and permit parking.
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