Some researches show that cancellations may cost an average medical practice as much as $150,000 per year per physician.

Is it your case? Not necessarily. But, no doubt, this indicator deserves your most serious attention.

How to calculate it

As cancellations may have complex nature, one indicator may not be enough for an analysis. To begin with, think about the following indicators:

Cancellation rate

What percentage of the appointments do your patients cancel? Just divide the number of canceled appointments by the total number.

Cancellation reasons 

You may prepare a set of common reasons why your patients cancel an appointment and ask this question each time they submit a cancellation request, online or by phone.

Refill rate

What percentage of cancellations is compensated by other clients' bookings?

Refill speed

Calculate the days between the confirmed cancellation and new booking for the same time slot.

Lost revenue

Multiply the number of canceled appointments that other clients did not rebook by the average revenue per visit.

What to do

This topic is complicated, and there is no single answer to this question. It would be best to base your decision on the data you see. 

Maybe the amount of lost revenue is not significant in your case, and you should only monitor the indicators regularly, checking that the situation is not worsening.

Also, you may need to analyze the cancellation reasons and consider what you may improve in your practice.

Maybe, you will decide to revise your cancellation policy, allowing more days to refill the canceled slot.

Or finally, you may implement an automated watching list to improve the Refill rate if the Waiting time is long enough