Data on Missed Appointments and No Shows

Geoff Zimpelman, Manager, Population Health &Multi-Cultural Access for St. Joseph’s Health  Systems provided us with the following data on Missed appointments and no shows for St. Joseph Health Care System’s.

  • There are 2 types of productivity losses when it comes to patient appointments. The first is cancelled appointments, and the second is no-shows.
  • Cancelled appointments are variable because those slots could be filled with another patient, so there is not always complete productivity loss when it comes to cancellations.
  • No-shows are a true productivity loss.
  • Within the Saint Joseph Physician Network we had approximately 42,500 no-shows in the past 12 months.
  • This accounts for approximately 12.1% of all appointments being lost productivity and revenue due to no-show. These no-shows often turn into another scheduled appointment. We have no-show policies in place to remove patients from continuing to schedule appointments at a practice if they habitually no-show.

During our conversation with Geoff, he stated that while they have this data, it does not indicate what percentage of missed and no show appointments are due to transportation issues.  He does believe that transportation plays big role in missed and no show appointments.