How CHCs can predict when they'll have no show visits

All Community Health Centers face a similar problem: high patient no show rates. CHCs do important work by serving a diverse and underserved patient population. But that population often doesn't have the resources to ensure they get to all of their appointments. We've found that CHCs experience anywhere from 20% to 40% patient no show rates!

These high no show rates undermine the most important operational metric a CHC leader needs to manage - provider utilization. But what can CHC leaders do about it?

The most worrisome path would be to do nothing. With ~30% no show rates, doing nothing means an organization would have a ceiling of 70% provider utilization. And that's if provider schedules were fully booked out. ‍

‍What some CHCs have started doing is double-booking a set number of appointment slots each day to offset the no shows. But, understandably so, providers often push back on this tactic. It's not data-driven and targeted, resulting in overstretched providers and frustrated patients.

But what if you could predict where and when in the day you were likely to see no shows? Then you could strategically double-book, so you get the benefit of higher utilization without burdening providers and patients.

Harvard researchers have built a model to predict patient no shows generally. And Streamline has built a platform that does this specifically for CHCs. Our platform uses historical patient data to understand the likelihood of a patient "no showing" in the future. And then by looking at who has upcoming appointments, we can identify how many no shows you are likely to see each hour on a given day.

In the specific example below, the CHC is likely to see 15+ no shows in the early morning and then 15+ in the early afternoon. This is when the practice manager can accept a few double-books because it's very likely there will be a significant number of no shows. By strategically double-booking even 10 slots a day, the group could see ~$1,500 in additional revenue per day or ~$400k per year.

Is your double-booking process data-driven? If so, we'd love to hear how you're doing it. Or are you looking to improve your utilization by using data to strategically double-book? If so, the Streamline platform can help!

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