When you understand exactly what the “percentage of patient arrivals” metric is (also known as “arrival rate”) and the skills needed to keep this statistic high, you’ll know how to have strong patient arrivals all the time.
Here’s the formula for percent of patient arrivals:
“Visits Seen” Divided by “Visits + Cancels + No-Shows”
You want your percent of arrivals to be 90% or higher every week.
How to Use the “Percentage of Patient Arrivals” Metric
Let me give you an example of this formula at work. Let’s assume that you have 150 visits one week. That same week, you had ten cancellations and five patients no-showed.
Your calculation would look like this:
150 divided by (150 + 10 + 5) = 90.9%. This is just above 90% so this metric is in a good range in your practice.
This statistic really is quite simple. The concepts we’re going to talk about on how to maintain it at a high level are not hard. If you’re not achieving high numbers, the answer is in the training, the coaching, the management, the leadership and the implementation of the right procedures.
What It Means If Your Patient Arrival Rate is Low
A low percentage just means that whoever is in charge of the therapist and your front desk are not trained up well enough. When I first started calculating this statistic in my practice, mine was 65%. I had a very low percentage of arrivals because I didn’t even know what this statistic was, I wasn’t tracking it and I didn’t know how to change it.
If you don’t know how to raise this statistic, you can’t just say, “I don’t understand why my patients aren’t coming in.” You have to learn how to increase this statistic. If that’s your mantra for 2024 and you get yourself and your team trained up, your year will be amazing.
Build a Strong Advanced Visit Schedule for a Better Arrivals Rate
Look at the numerator there: Visits. That’s the number at the top of this equation. To get that percent of arrivals up, you’re going to have to maximize your visits.
To maximize visits, you have to have a very strong advanced schedule. What is an advanced schedule? To define it for you, it’s the visits that you have scheduled for next week, before that week begins. How many visits do you have on the schedule Sunday night at midnight? To have super-strong visits, you need to have a super-strong advanced schedule.
There are many of our Lemonades—free webinars—available to you. There’s Lemonades about how to increase your stats and build an advanced schedule. Those will start familiarizing you with the procedures that will improve this percent of arrivals.
Increasing Patient Visits During the Current Week
In addition to a strong advanced schedule, you need to know how to keep scheduling patients in the current week. That is another effective way to increase your visits.
Here’s one way you can make that happen. Make these lists:
- Who are the people waiting for a time?
- Who are the people that have weird schedules and need the last minute schedule?
- Who are the medically fragile kids that you want to call the morning of the schedule opening and see how they’re feeling that day?
- Who are the people that don’t always have gas money and need to be scheduled last minute in case they have gas money or a neighbor can bring them?
Make lists of these patients so that you can schedule them in the same week and you’ll be able to maximize your schedule.
Preventing Patient Cancellations with Strong Communication
You need to have such strong communication between your staff and your patients that every visit that is scheduled before the week starts actually comes in. Now, we know every visit’s not going to come in, but you need to really take a look at your reasons for cancellations. If you look at every cancellation reason, it’s going to show you where your team’s weaknesses are.
If an appointment is canceled because of vacation—like a last-minute cancel, not a cancellation in advance, that’s a problem. They should have known that they were having a vacation two weeks ago. So they should have canceled this appointment weeks ago.
If it’s a last-minute cancel because of camp or trip during the summer, Christmas or spring break, you should have been aware that they had scheduled their child for a camp or trip. That’s where strong staff communication comes in. Sometimes parents forget to tell you about these upcoming events even though you’ve asked. But for the most part, look at these late cancellations as controllable variables.
Get the Help You Need to Maximize Patient Visits!
There’s so much help available 24/7 in our Lemonade Library. Browse the available topics now to find the exact tips and instructions you need to build staff skills in scheduling and communication to keep your book filled and your percent of arrivals high!
About Diane Crecelius
Diane Crecelius is a physical therapist and founder of a multi-million-dollar, multi-location practice with well over 3,000 visits per week and 200 staff! In the past several years, Diane has worked tirelessly to support Peds-A-Palooza® Community & Conferences and the success of Private Practice Owners. Diane has presented at nearly every Peds-A-Palooza live and virtual conference since the first sold-out conference in 2018. Her extensive knowledge derives from her decades in practice and from being trained and consulted by Survival Strategies, Inc. She uses this training to help Private Practice Owners learn how to thrive and expand while keeping their stress low.