How To Deal With Patients Who are Always Late

Everyone’s time is precious. As physicians, we do our best to see our patients as close to their scheduled time as possible. Being on time requires both the physician and the patient to take part. When there is one patient who shows up later than their scheduled appointment time, that can potentially affect your efficiency for the rest of the day.

Most clinical practices have them. Patients who are habitually late to their appointments. I remember a patient told me once that he would show up to another doctor’s appointment an hour late, because the usual wait time would be 1.5 to 2 hours.

Imagine if you have a 9:00 am patient who checks in at 9:15 am, and your 9:15 am patient checks in right on time. You are one person and cannot be in two places simultaneously. Your 9:30 am patient arrives early. In this situation, I choose I honor the punctual patients and see the late patient at a later time.

For an outpatient office to have a smooth flow, besides setting up protocols for the staff, being focused to see one patient at a time, it is vital for the patients to be on time. There are different things we can do to reduce tardiness of the patients.

When a patient is late, be curious about the reason behind it and ask the patient. Sometimes it may be an accident on the road, sometimes may be their ride, or it may be many other reasons. When you ask the patient, it allows them to realize that you care about patients being on time.

It is important to set clear policies on late patients and let the patients know before their appointments. For example, you have the choice of having the patient reschedule to another day if they are fifteen minutes late.

Another way to help patients respect everyone’s time is to let them know that they have less time to spend with you because they are late. For example, if a patient is ten minutes late, you may let them know that, in a fifteen-minute follow-up visit, you have five minutes left to spend with that patient.

It is important to set clear policies and set boundaries, especially for the patients who are always late to their appointments. If nothing is addressed, those patients will think their behavior is alright and tolerated, and nothing will change.

Another strategy I have used is to tell that chronically late patient that their appointment time is thirty minutes before the actual scheduled time. That worked well for some patients. This method will not work if the patient has access to the portal and sees the actual booked time.

There is no one size fits all solution. Different strategies work for different patients. Sometimes we can be creative about it.

As the physician facing this issue of habitually late patients, it is important to notice and acknowledge what you are thinking and feeling. It is normal to think that the patient should have been on time. It is normal to feel frustrated or annoyed when a patient comes late. It helps to understand the situation. Sometimes it is no parking in the garage. Sometimes it is some other unexpected circumstances. You are here to serve the patients. While it is important to address their tardiness, it is more important to show them empathy and give them grace.

Rather than being set on thinking that the patients are late on purpose or for no good reason, I choose to be curious about it. I choose to hear what they have to say. Usually, I am notified when the patient arrives late. Our front desk calls me when a patient arrives more than ten minutes late and asks what I would like to do about the patient. When I go into the room, I may mention that I thought they were not coming. Depending on the personality of the patients, I may say things differently about how it is important to be on time.

To keep the efficiency, it is important to be mindful of the time throughout the day. The time you spend in the room with each patient varies according their needs. You can do all you can to reduce the frequency and the number of late patients. If you have a patient who is fifteen minutes late today, this is not something you can change. You get to decide what to think of it. You can choose to focus on how to keep your efficiency (or even ramp it up) rather than dwelling in the thought about how the patient should have been on time. You can choose to come up with more strategies to address late patients. You can choose to discuss with the patient about it.