No-shows: How an appointment scheduling system can minimise healthcare's biggest headache

The Problem

Any organisation providing medical services will know that the effects of patients missing appointments without prior notice causes problems from almost every viewpoint.

Patients may find their condition worsens and they end up needing more treatment in future. Meanwhile, every missed appointment is a slot that cannot be booked by another patient, while also creating delays for patients waiting in the practice on the day. Internally, valuable doctor time is wasted, scheduling issues occur and, where relevant, revenue is lost.

In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) reports that 7.2 m outpatient appointments are missed with the general family doctor every year. That represents 1.2 m hours of doctors' time wasted and, with an estimated cost of £30 for each no-show, a cost of £216 m.

Why do patients miss appointments?

There have been countless studies into the reasons behind missed appointments and while the results vary across the type of healthcare organisation and the location, some factors are recurrent:

• Appointment was forgotten
• Last-minute problems: childcare, travel delays, weather, work commitments
• Could not contact provider to reschedule appointments
• Too unwell to attend
• Fear of diagnosis or treatment
• Poor relationship with doctor or practice

These diverse reasons highlight how personalised and timely communication—especially with automated SMS reminders and appointment reminders—can reduce patient no-shows and improve overall patient experience.

How can TIMIFY help?

It‘s clear that some of these problems can be minimised if the communication channels between patients and medical practices are improved, as well as offering the possibility to reschedule or cancel appointments easily. This is why TIMIFY has developed a series of automated reminders and confirmations across the customer journey—from booking appointments to post-appointment—designed to tackle some of the above problems and reduce no-shows.

Patients can cancel or reschedule online

One of the main benefit of TIMIFY's appointment scheduling system is that patients can book appointments online and then cancel or reschedule them when they need to. The freedom of managing their own booking online means patients can react to last-minute problems and reschedule in seconds with a few simple clicks.

Medical practices also have the freedom to decide the minimum time patients must cancel before the appointment start (from 1 hour to 48 h), defining clear appointment slots in the booking system.

With a real-time system managing the booked appointments calendar, any cancelled or rescheduled appointment will be made available for other patients in seconds—reducing noshow, boosting appointment availability, and helping engage patients.

Patients and staff receive email or SMS notifications whenever changes occur. This keeps your team informed, and reinforces patient loyalty and satisfaction by demonstrating reliable care coordination.

Appointment confirmations

Many practices still rely on a paper reminder slip given to patients or, for phone bookings, the responsibility to make a note lies with the patient. Of course, this leads to countless errors and forgotten appointments.

When a booking is made with TIMIFY, the patient can add it to their personal patient portal calendars—such as Apple, Google Calendar, Outlook.com, Outlook, and Yahoo—enhancing patient outcomes and memory of appointment details.

Immediately, the patient receives a confirmation email and/or SMS containing all appointment details and links to cancel or reschedule appointments themselves. This level of transparency supports a personalised relationship with patients and appeals to new patients seeking modern care access.

Appointment reminders

Reminders can be sent up to 72 hours before the appointment via email or SMS. You can customise when reminders are sent, helping reduce patient no-show rates by up to 60 %.

Studies show weekend or evening appointment reminders and slot alerts can significantly reduce missed bookings, particularly among high risk patients or younger demographics.

As with the confirmation, reminders clearly display all appointment information and links to cancel or reschedule, helping patients attend appointments and improving healthcare journey continuity.

Make TIMIFY work for your practice

TIMIFY brings the power of medical scheduling software to your practice and offers easy integration with your existing website or booking page.

All communications can be tailored to match your customisable templates, including automated reminders, confirmations, and even pre-visit digital forms that collect relevant health data ahead of time.

The Notification section allows you to track if messages are sent, delivered, opened, or blocked—offering visibility into which patient populations require additional contact efforts.

This frees your team from administrative tasks and manual chasing—so they can focus on patient care and treatment plans. Especially helpful for improving efficiency and reducing workload.

You can also tag frequent no-show patients in your database to identify repeat patterns, analyse patient characteristics, and implement effective strategies to reduce missed appointments, such as call reminders for high risk individuals.