*typo in title - should read “how do others cancel whole day list of patients”
I’m interested to know how other practices get around the problem of having to reschedule or cancel a clinician’s whole day list due to illness or last min holiday.
I think there is feature in Dentally which allows you to send a bulk email or text message for all the patients in one clinician’s diary (someone please remind me how) but that worries as we might lose the details of who those patients were in the system and get complaints later.
I prefer to ensure we call them and cancel / reschedule each, one by one so it’s 100% confirmed that the patient is aware in case they didnt see the sms or email and come to the practice and start ranting about the cancelled appointment. Where we cant get in touch with them, we leave them a voicemail message and send an email / text but still wont remove them. We cycle through the checkin, in surgery and checkout (tick box) to prevent any further reminder emails going to the patient confirming the old appointment.
When the patient finally calls back or we call them back again and finally get through, we remove the old appointment from the diary after the new one is booked.
This kind of guarantees us that the patient has been made aware. Perhaps not the mos efficient way of doing it, but it is almost bullet proof that the patient is aware.
What strategies do other practices employ to cancel a whole day list?