Cancellation and No Show Notes
When a patient cancels or does not show up for an appointment, you can quickly add a no-show or cancellation note to their chart by using the No Show or Cancellation action buttons in the appointment. This will automatically remove the appointment from the Scheduler view and allow you to accurately report on no-shows and cancels. You will also be able to quickly select a reason for the no-show/cancel. Choosing one of these pre-defined reasons allows you to better analyze and report on the common reasons patients miss appointments.
- Click on your patient's missed appointment in the Scheduler.
- In the Edit Appointment window, select No Show or Cancel.
- In the pop-up window, select a Reason. We highly recommend choosing one of the pre-defined reasons, so that you'll be able to more accurately see trends in No Shows and Cancellations.
- For canceled appointments, you have the option to input the date and time they contacted the office to cancel the appointment. This data is important to enter because it's tied to enhanced reporting capabilities.
- Enter in any additional comments.
- You can opt to add the patient to the Waitlist using the Add patient to the Waitlist for follow-up call check box.
- Save.
- The appointment will be removed from view, and the No Show/Cancellation notice will appear in the patient's chart.
Do Not Drag and Drop
If you want to truly track cancellations, do not drag and drop appointments. Dragging and dropping appointments will cause you to lose visibility into that cancellation.
Example: A patient has an appointment on Wednesday. He or she calls on Tuesday and says he or she can’t make the Wednesday appointment but can come in on Friday. The best practice is to create a new appointment then mark the original appointment on Wednesday as a cancellation.
Adding No Show or Cancellation Notes Directly in Patient Chart
While no-show and cancellation notes can be added directly to the patient's chart using the Patient Record Actions drop-down menu, we recommend using the Appointment buttons as described above.
Important: Manually creating no-show or cancel notes in the patient's chart will not automatically delete the existing appointment from the Scheduler as these functions are not tied together. This will generate a result in the Missed Notes report by double-counting no-shows/cancels and attributing visits to patient cases when they did not occur. If this happens, you will need to go find the missed appointment and manually delete it using the Delete button to ensure accurate report results.
Can I Remove Accidental No Show or Cancellation Notes?
If you have accidentally added a no-show or cancellation note, follow the steps below to remove the note.
- Find the patient you are looking for.
- In the Records section of the patient's chart, find the Cancellation or No Show note you want to remove. Ensure View Reason is selected in the drop-down menu and use the play button to open the next window.
- You will see a list of all Cancellation and No Show notes for this patient. Find the date of the note you want to discard and click Remove.
