Appointment confirmation
Contacting the patient before the visit to make sure they will attend at the booked time. Done by phone or message, it helps cut no-shows and empty slots in the diary.
≈ appointment confirmations · appointment reminder · booking confirmation · confirming appointments · reminder call
Why a clinic should confirm appointments
A patient books, then their plans change, they forget the date or start to wonder whether they need to come at all. Confirmation is the moment the clinic finds this out in advance rather than from an empty chair. If the patient can't make it, they are rebooked and the freed time goes to someone else.
Confirmation is not a "see you soon" broadcast. The front desk needs an answer: attending, rescheduling or cancelling. Until there is one, the booking counts as unconfirmed. Every visit is worth confirming, first consultations and follow-up treatment alike, and one named person on each shift should own the task rather than "whoever is free".
What it looks like in practice
- a reminder the day before, through the patient's preferred channel: call, messenger or SMS;
- a short message on the day with the time, the address and a clinic contact;
- a call to anyone who hasn't replied to the message;
- the outcome logged in the CRM: confirmed, rescheduled, cancelled, no answer.
It is easy to measure: the share of confirmed bookings out of all bookings for the day, and the no-show rate for confirmed versus unconfirmed bookings. If there's no difference between the two, confirmation is being done as a formality.
Common mistakes: automated messages that expect no reply, confirming only new patients, nobody owning the task, calling at times that don't suit the patient. Another is the receptionist not knowing what to say when the patient hesitates. The script needs a separate block for this: remind them why they booked and offer to reschedule rather than cancel.