I am reposting one of the blogs from the MI AADE blogs. As diabetes educators, we always make extra efforts to make sure referred patients attend our programs. Please share ideas with the problem of "no show".
Best practices from posts:
-
Schedule the first appointment as an “assessment appointment”.
We used to schedule patients for their initial assessment. During the assessment we would tell them about our class. Many would say "I thought this was the class" and not return for the group sessions. Now when someone calls for an appointment, we schedule them for class. Once that is on the books, we tell them "first you need to have an assessment appointment, Let's schedule that now". It has increased our class attendance rate.
-
Our class is two sessions. To help them return for the second session, we leave a lot of the nutrition info for that session.
-
If they do not come for class or do not complete class, we send a note to the physician. Occasionally a patient will call to say their physician received our note and insists they come to class.
-
Our secretary makes reminder phone calls to all patients before they come for their initial assessment. Once they’ve come to their initial assessment, group classes are scheduled and patients are given a list of class dates and offerings. Some choose not to attend the whole program but many do attend all the sessions. When patients miss classes we call them to provide a make-up date. We give them three chances to make up sessions. If we don’t hear from them we send a letter to the physician letting them know that they didn’t finish the program.