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Today, The Straits Times highlighted the blight of dental clinics in Singapore - Patients who fail their dental appointments.
Over the past year, the National Heathcare Group (NHG) reported that 40% of their patients failed to keep their appointments while SingHealth said that 30% of their patients failed to turn up for their appointments. This compares with about 28% of Americans who suffer "appointment amnesia" as reported by practice management consultant Sally McKenzie.
These patients who fail their dental appointments deprive other patients of an earlier appointments, resulting in the waiting time for an appointment at a polyclinic to be between three months and half a year.
"When patients fail to keep their appointments or give us advance notice to cancel or reschedule, we are unable to release those slots to other patients who need them," said an NHG spokesman.
This happens despite NHG sending reminder letters out a week before the dental appointment, a Phone message sent four days before the appointment and a SMS message sent three days in advance to remind the patients.
The Straits Times spoke to 12 NHG patients yesterday. A 60-year-old housewife who did not want to be named said, "Yes, they will remind us by SMS, but it's hard to track. It's too easy to forget..."
Since last month, NHG has implemented a $8 deposit for for those who require follow-up appointments to address this problem. Patients who fail will forfeit their deposit. However, if the appointment is cancelled or rescheduled within at least three working days, the patient will not lose their deposit.
The $8 deposit fee is also waived for those on public assistance or Medifund schemes, the spokesman added.
It is still early days whether these measures will yield a "positive improvement", but it appears to be a step in the right direction.
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Just imagine the staff cost involved in having to remind a patient three times over a period of one week before their appointment.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, can you imagine the 40% loss in productivity for the dentists involved. If all our dentists were efficiently and productively deployed, we need not spend more public money to train additional dentists.
All this added cost invariably gets passed on to the patient. And you often wonder why the public is always complaining that dentistry is expensive.
The question now is whether these patients who chronically fail their appointments should be made to take responsibility for their actions.