Even when you are on top scheduling, incidents happen and your therapists need to cancel a session last minute. For those events, we share five best practices to handle these sudden cancellations.
1. Keep the client happy, and let technology help you
Although it may take more time and effort to find a therapist for a last minute session, honoring the commitment with your client creates a better relationship with the family. In the long term this leads to better interaction, contract renewals, and referrals.
Maintaining all client and therapist information in one electronic platform will allow you make a sound decision in short time. With Autism Clinic Software you can use our Quick Schedule feature to help you find the best match using a wide range set of filters: availability, credentials, distance, etc. Let technology help you make prompt decisions and improve your response time.
2. Check Contract Status
Make sure you are scheduling sessions within the authorization dates and hour amounts. This way you ensure a smooth and consistent process when Billing. Often times when reacting to an emergency we tend to immediately search an immediate solution, disregarding other factors. Don’t let this happen to you.
Luckily on ACS you can easily see the amount of hours authorized and provided on our Quick Schedule page, no need to navigate paperwork. What’s more, if you book appointments beyond the amount of hours authorized, you will receive a warning just to confirm if you want to go ahead and schedule.
3. Prevent Overtime and Schedule disruptions
While normally you know who your best therapists are, relying on memory alone may cause you to push your employees into overtime, or disrupt their established schedules. With ACS, in seconds you can know which staffs have availability for the date/time you are looking for and how many hours they are working that week, so you can stay away from OT.
If you are interested on how Timesheets can be automated and the benefit of such, you may want to read our article on 5 Benefits of Switching to an Automated Timesheet System
4. Consider Driving and Mileage
Don’t forget that most of the time you have to account for driving time and mileage when scheduling therapists. Looking into this not only improves your chances of reducing extended travel, but also minimizing the odds of booking someone for more than eight hours that day, or 40 hours a week.
On ACS, you can search for a specific date and time, and see where are the closest therapists to the appointment address. You can also see how many appointments therapists are handling on said day. This way you have all your bases covered.
5. Communication is Key
Keeping therapists, supervisors, and families on the loop is they key component to running your clinic like a well-oiled machine. Thankfully on ACS, the minute you confirm a new appointment, the calendar is updated for parents and therapists alike. You may even send them a notification confirming the change, and you are ready to go!
If you want to be able to handle cancellations efficiently, and take advantage of the many other features ACS offers, click below to sign up for a free 30-day trial, and see it for yourself!