In doing some deeper analysis on data in the US and abroad, we looked more closely at the percentage of patients that show up for their consultation appointments (i.e. the show up rate) and the percentage of consultations that actually start treatment (i.e. the batting average).
Intuitively, we would guess that certain events would cause a patient to be more or less likely to show up for his or her appointment and then sign a contract after going through a consultation. Specifically, if a patient calls for a consultation appointment and is scheduled to be seen that same day, the chances of that patient showing up are much greater than if the patient’s appointment got scheduled 6 months from the date of the call. Pretty simple, right? If you make someone wait 6 months for an appointment, they will probably find another provider. Even if you are a major star in the industry, folks want to get started when they want to get started.
But exactly how quickly do things drop off when it comes to the time a patient has to wait for a new patient appointment. Like banana left in the refrigerator, things tend to go downhill pretty fast. Here are some specifics:
Obviously, the best show up rate comes when the patient is seen on the day they request the appointment. In other words, 0 days between the call and the appointment date. In a number of practices we reviewed, the show up rate exceeded 90%. Now, this number can be skewed a bit by a couple of factors. First, if you have walk-ins, the show up rate for them is 100% because you never knew there was a consultation until the patient showed up. Second, there are probably a material number of situations in which the patient consultation appointment was not entered into the system –for whatever reason—and when the patient arrived, the office entered the consultation appointment into the system. Still, as you would reasonably expect, the show up rate is very high for those same day patients.
For patients who have to wait 1-7 days for the appointment, that show up rate drops by around 22% (we’re talking percentage drop here, not percentage points). So, if you had a show up rate of 90% for same-day consultations, the rate drops off to 70% for the patients made to wait up to a week. That’s still a pretty decent number, but over time, this can add up. If you have 30 consults appointed in a month, you lose out on 6 extra patients per month, or 72 per year. If you signed half of those patients with a fee of $4,000, that means a loss of $144,000 in fees as the penalty for making a patient wait. Maybe not super huge to some, but for others, that can pay the light bill.
From 7 days, things start to fall off. If you make patients wait up to 2 weeks for a consult, the show up rate falls by another 23%. So, if you had a 70% show up rate for people waiting a week, that drops to 54% for people waiting from 1-2 weeks. In just 8-14 days, you are down from almost everyone showing up for a consult to just over half. Half! In our previous example, you’re losing out on 11-12 consults per month, or up to 144 patients seen per year.
Make them wait a month and that show up rate drops another 23%. Now we’re down from 90% for same-day folks to around 40%. And if less than half of the potential new patients are showing up for their appointments, most of your advertising dollars and effort are simply wasted.
We all know the familiar excuses starting with “we’re just too busy.” If you have no interest in growth, that’s a good attitude to have. But if you are looking to build a practice, you want to get those new patients in as soon as possible to give yourself a fighting chance to sign them.
My favorite reason for long consult wait times is “if we make the patients wait 2 months, they’ll feel like they are waiting for something special.” Really? When wait times for Disney rides stated piling up, the Disney folks didn’t applaud that fact and claim that people would value their ride experience more. No, they instituted policies like Fast Passes to reduce wait times and speed the time from arrival at the park to enjoying Disney happiness.
In our next post, we’ll discuss some ways to get new patients in the door as quickly as possible and keep that show up rate high.
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