It is the responsibility of the patient to keep all appointments unless there are extenuating circumstances. (See “Patient Rights and Responsibilities.”) It is detrimental to patient care to have appointments not filled due to patients who do not arrive as scheduled. A “no-show” is the failure of a patient to arrive for a scheduled appointment without calling in advance to cancel or reschedule. This office has traditionally charged a $25 fee for all occurrences after the third occurrence of “no-show.” This fee cannot be billed to an insurance company, and is the patient’s responsibility. The patient will be provided a copy of this policy prior to the charging of any fee, and any “no-show” that occurs after receipt of the policy is subject to the fee. Failure to pay this fee may result in the patient’s account being turned over to collections, or, if the practice feels that the patient’s pattern of failure to arrive for appointments compromises the patient’s care, discharge from the practice. Due to Medicaid regulations regarding patient responsibility for charges, this practice reserves the right to discharge any Medicaid patient who fails to arrive for appointments after receipt of a copy of our “no-show” policy. All such situations will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
Patient tardiness for appointments compromises the overall operation of the medical office. As noted in “Patient Rights and Responsibilities,” the patient is expected to keep all appointments. If there are extenuating circumstances governing a patient’s tardiness for an appointment, a phone call notifying the office staff is expected. The physician reserves the right to reschedule any appointment for which a patient is more than 15 minutes late. In addition, habitual tardiness (more than two occurrences) of more than 10 minutes without notification of the office staff may be treated as a “no-show” (see “Patient No-Show Policy”).
You can download a PDF copy of this policy for your records here.