Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheffield
I’m uk based- I note some posters saying they would not agree to their t holding some money on account -credit card/cash in case of repeat/late cancellation
-what would they suggest instead to secure income /best utilisation of therapists time eg other/ urgent clients
I have no vested interest either way -as a veterinary surgeon the practice gets many “failed to attends” but there is always something else to do in a hospital practice eg contacting clients with results assisting with other cases etc -major surgery fails take several Hundred £ out of the till but we NEVER ask for deposits/credit card details in advance- that’s life - in business there is always something else you can be doing
I guess a therapist could set a limit of last minute cancellations before referring a client out which is clearly defined (endless vague illnesses/ excuses like a school child would require common sense to sort through)
|
When I worked in an agency serving Medicaid clients, charging for missed sessions was not an option, let alone asking for a deposit. Our clients were destitute. The tricky thing is that this population also has a higher no-show rate due to several factors. One is that many of our clients were on disability due to their mental illnesses and that's why they qualified for Medicaid. So they had pretty severe symptoms. Another factor was that because they were living in poverty, access to transportation was often an issue.
It was definitely a difficult problem to address, especially since Medicaid reimbursement rates are so low. From what I can recall, what we ended up doing was purchasing a fleet of vehicles and hiring transporters to assist clients with transportation barriers. We did reminder calls and if someone said they weren't coming, there was almost always someone else we could fill that slot with. We also hired a lot of therapists who were community based, so they met clients in the clients' homes. For med management, we actually double or triple booked appointments. That wasn't ideal, but it seemed to be the only way we didn't LOSE money. We obviously couldn't do that for therapy appointments since they were much longer. I think there was a limit of three cancellations or no-shows because we had a long waiting list.