Who’s late?

I’ve been thinking about our lateness and no-show policy recently. My overall philosophy is that I will see a patient (assuming we are still in the office) no matter how late they show up for their appointment. However, if they are more than half an hour late, I think that all on-time patients take priority and we just have to try to squeeze the late patient in wherever we can. My reasoning for always accepting late patients (even though it can throw our schedule off) is that we have situations where I am late getting to a patient. This can happen because a patient has a bigger problem than we first anticipated (so they take longer than their scheduled time) or because of any emergency that might walk in the door that we have no choice but to take care of. So, if we are allowed to be late getting to a patient, the patient has to be allowed to be late getting to us because I think that everyone’s time is equally valuable. I’m not sure that the same grace should be extended to no-show patients, who don’t arrive for their appointments and don’t call to let us know that they aren’t coming. After about 2 or 3 consecutive no-show appointments for the same patient, I think we have to consider not rescheduling that patient or doing something else to prevent the problem from continuing (such as charging patients a fee for further no-show appointments).