JBS nails it.
Every other solution or workaround offered so far requires that you know the name of the patient up front. This is just not practical in a busy practice. In general, most doctor's office that even bother with no shows only do so when the office is quiet, as do we. To have to take the time to write down the name of the patient and add to a list to call later is just cumbersome. There has to be a better way of doing this, and indeed there is. We currently use MOMSAT, a local PM, which is how we actually tract office appointments. In that program all I have to do is click, "no show list" and select the date range and a patient list of no shows is given, minus those patients that have already been contacted and rescheduled. THAT is what I need. Unfortunately MOMSat does not interface well with AC so we have to do "double data entry" in order to keep track of the patients.
So here is the deal: I am actually trying to figure out if it will be possible for me to switch to AC alone and start using AC's PM. Obviously at this point I can't. Alas, AC just does not measure up to the task.
@Bert: AC is able to record a "No show" but once it is saved, it disappears in never-never-land, only to be seen if you search for the particular patient in which case it will show as an addendum under past encounters. This is this useful, but only if you happen to see Mr Smith again a year later and he complains he could not come see you because you had no appointments. The you can tell him that he no showed 3 times in the past 3 months...
One of my pet peeves is the fact that once you make a patient a "no show," the appointment is removed from AC. Again, why? that appointment was made and the slot was assigned to that patient. Removing the name from the schedule implies that there was no appointment then, which is not true. The appointment should be marked RED or have a strike through, but it should be left on the schedule.
What would be really helpful is to have a list of no shows that your office can try to contact, reschedule, and re-engage in your practice. Now you might say why bother with no shows, and part of me would agree with you. But this is not always appropriate. there are cases where you need to contact the patient. Say, you just did a lap chole and the path shows gallbladder cancer... then there is the financial aspect.
@JBS: Although both treads are similar, they are not the same. This one deals with no shows, or patients who have made appointments and did not show. The other deals with patients who have been referred to my practice by a referring physician and have never contacted us, or we have been unable to contact them, to make an appointment. Two different patient populations. No shows made an appointment so we were able to contact them at one point and an appointment was made. The other group is sitting in limbo somewhere.
@Marc@ac. I appreciate your honesty. Short and to the point. I will make a recommendation, but why would it add more weight to my request? This is what I would consider a very basic task for ANY PMS: to track patients. That you think we have to ask for it to be implemented already tell me more than I need to know about AC's PM.
Again, I am making comments on AC 6.7.7. I have not used later versions. Someone please tell me this has been fixed in later versions. As it stands now, we are reaching a deadline. In 90 days I have to switch to AC 8.x. I need to make a decision if I am going to stay with AC or move on...
