Control Slip Instructions
Missing visits means that patients are not following the recommendations for care as prescribed by the Doctor. While at times there are valid reasons for missing a scheduled appointment, it is always important to work with the patients to reschedule their appointments. If the patient is not rescheduled, it leads to an interruption in their care. Interruptions in care may cause an exacerbation of their problem, may lead to consequences regarding payment of their insurance claim, or there may be an unresolved issue or misunderstanding between the patient and the office that needs attention.
The following guidelines should be followed carefully to insure the missed appointment leads to a rescheduled appointment and that there is no interruption in the treatment plan.
- Call within 15 minutes of the missed appointment. The goal is to reschedule within the same day!
- Use Control Slip procedure:
- Track call calls/text/emails on the Control Slip
- Make every attempt to reach and reschedule in the next 24-48 hours. This may mean multiple calls in a day to get patient rescheduled.
- Calls (followed with text/email) are made 15 minutes after missed, the next day, the following day and then 2 days later)
- After 4 attempted contacts Control Slip goes to Doctor. Doctor makes final call to patient.
- Indicate in the patients records the date of the missed appointment, the reason and the reschedule. This allows the Doctor the option of discussing with the patient on their next visit the importance of kept appointments AND it is good risk management.
(It is important to never delete a patient appointment if they cancel. The only deleting of appointments should occur when a patient has fully dropped care and you are removing future AMS’d appointments from the next week and beyond. At this point you will also mark the patient as dropped from the NP Wellness Tracking Report if so indicated.)