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Cancel/No Show Rate KPI

Cancel and No-Show appointment types represent lost earnings. Understanding your scheduling practices and identifying ways to minimize cancels/no-shows can help you maximize clinic revenue.

This metric, in particular, is much more individually specific than our other averages. You should consider setting individual clinic goals for Cancel/No Show Rate, as we’ve seen a lot of variation on this even between clinics within the same company. Additionally, there some specialties that simply have a lower expected cancel/no-show rate, such as specialties that treat pediatric patients.

Click on this chart to open the By Clinic comparison chart for Cancel/No Show Rate. You’ll be able to see a breakdown of this data by the clinic, view a data table containing the calculation values, and export the results.

Calculation

Canceled/No-Show Appointments: This is the total number of appointments marked as either a cancel or a no-show in the scheduler or on the patient’s chart (not recommended) during the selected time frame.

Total Scheduled Visits: This is the total number of appointments that have been created in the WebPT Scheduler during the selected time period and were not deleted.

Cancel/No Show Rate: This is the number of cancel/no-show appointment types divided by the total number of created appointments. This is calculated by (No-Shows + Cancels) / total number of scheduled visits.

Strategies for Management

There are so many reasons why a patient may cancel or no-show for an appointment—bad weather, a sick family member, traffic incident—that you can’t control. Here are a few things that could minimize the impact of these events on your practice:

  • Consider creating a written no-show and cancellation policy. This acts as a deterrent but can also help your clinic recoup revenue lost from missed appointments.  
  • Use the Waitlist to maintain a list of patients who are waiting for therapists and their availability. This list will give you a better chance of filling canceled appointments as they become available.
  • When a patient calls in to cancel, always try to get the patient scheduled for a new appointment. If you can’t, ensure they are placed on the Waitlist.
  • Implement automated appointment reminders: automated text, email, and phone call reminders save staff time and decrease missed appointments, which leads to increased revenue.

Data Requirements

There are a few things to remember about the data the make up the cancel/no-show rate. In order for Analytics to include data, each of the following must be true:

  • The appointment must be connected to a patient.
  • The appointment must have an active status (not deleted).
  • The event—which was created by clicking Cancel or No Show—must be active (not deleted).
  • The appointment must be canceled or no-showed from the scheduler to accurately reflect the correct percentage and visit count.

Clinic Data

Analytics attributes all data to the clinic listed in the Facility field in the appointment.

Data Best Practices

This metric relies on the accurate and consistent use of the WebPT EMR Scheduler as intended.

Follow the link for all recommend Analytics Data Collection Best Practices.

  • Don’t drag and drop rescheduled appointments. You lose visibility into what was actually a canceled appointment. 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 in the open slot on Friday, then mark the original appointment on Wednesday as a cancellation.
  • Don’t delete appointments.
  • Schedule all appointments in the Scheduler.
  • Each provider needs his or her own calendar for each location where he or she treats patients.
  • Use the Cancel and No Show buttons on the Scheduler, and always include a Reason.
  • Don’t cancel/no-show from the patient chart.
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