I’m a dentist at an FQHC with interest in efficiency and the tech side of things. Our no-show rate is fairly high, and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to efficiently track no-shows and late cancels and automate sending letters as much as possible. I’ve searched the forum and found some advice about people charging for no-shows, but we are unable to do that with Medicaid.
Here’s what I’d like, if possible. I’d like for the front desk to be able to mark what number of no-show or late cancel it is for the patient form the appointment screen. They would check encounters (easy enough, there is a button for that), change the visit status to no-show or late cancel, and then record whether it is the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd no-show or late cancel from that screen. Then I would like to be able to run a report through Lookup Encounters preferably, but the full blown Registry if needed for a date range, and filtering by 1st, 2nd, 3rd no-shows/late cancel. Then I imagine batch letters can be run (I haven’t tried this, but I see the option to run letters).
Is this possible? I see there is a “Diagnosis” box on the appointment screen, and I was thinking about making a few dummy diagnoses, but it looks like this box doesn’t take ICD codes, it is just a preset list that you can manage in the Admin pane, and the Diagnosis box on the Lookup Encounters screen only accepts ICD codes. So these don’t seem to match up.
The other option I thought of is to create 6 visit types (1st late cancel, 2nd late cancel, 3rd late cancel, 1st no show, etc) and then the front desk can assign the appropriate visit type. But this would unnecessarily multiply the amount of visit types, and I am not sure whether you can map multiple visit types to be recognized as no-show or cancels.
Finally, I see that the CPT code is an option to filter by in the Lookup Encounters. Currently our no-show and late cancel visit types are non-billable, and we don’t generate progress notes for these appointments. I’d like to keep it that way. But is there a way to add a dummy CPT code from the appointment screen AND not have a progress note? Perhaps generating a claim and adding a CPT code manually? I saw someone commenting about having the late cancel and no-show visit types billable, but then marking them non-billable before you close the window? I don’t have the billing security key enabled right now so I can’t open the “Claim” button and explore myself right now.
Please help! I’d love to get our no-show rates down because it is the best thing for the organization and our patients who are waiting to get in, but also to help even out provider schedules and avoid the knee-jerk reaction of double-booking to compensate for a high no-show rate.
Thanks!
