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PatientNow Waitlist Request Calls
How Katie supports a PatientNow waitlist: capturing patients who want earlier dates and catching cancellations at any hour, so coordinators can match them.
Openings appear when someone calls to cancel
Most short-notice openings in an aesthetic schedule start with a phone call: a patient who is sick, a sitter who cancelled, a work trip that moved. Whether that opening gets filled depends on how fast your team hears about it and how quickly they can find someone who wants it.
If the cancellation arrives as a voicemail at seven in the evening, the slot is often gone before anyone knows it was open. A prime injector slot on a Saturday morning is the kind of time that should never sit empty for that reason. Neither should a surgeon's consult block that took months to fill.
Building the waitlist from inbound calls
Plenty of callers would take an earlier appointment if one came up. Katie can ask, as part of your booking questions, whether the caller wants to be considered for an earlier opening, and record what that means for them.
That turns a waitlist from a sticky note on a monitor into structured information your coordinator can actually work from. You can ask the flexibility question of every booking caller, or only for services with long lead times, such as consults with your busiest surgeon. For each caller, Katie notes:
- Treatment and provider preference
- Days and times they could come in on short notice
- How much notice they need
- Best way to reach them about an opening
Who reaches out when a slot opens
Your coordinators contact waitlisted patients about an opening, using whatever process you already follow in PatientNow. What changes is the speed and quality of the inputs: cancellations are captured the moment they are called in, day or night, and the people who want earlier dates are already listed with their availability.
For a coordinator, that means opening the day with the summaries in hand: what just opened, and who asked for an earlier date. Matching them is quick work compared with digging through voicemail and memory.
Keeping the list honest
A waitlist only works if it is current. When a waitlisted patient calls to say she no longer needs the earlier slot, or wants to book something else entirely, Katie records that too, so your coordinator can update the list instead of offering an opening to someone who has moved on.
MedReception AI is live with practices on PatientNow, and every call ends in a summary of who called, why and how urgent it is, so waitlist changes are not buried in a mailbox.
It is also worth deciding how long a waitlist request stays active. Katie can tell callers your rule, for example that requests are kept for a month unless the patient renews them, so the list does not fill with stale names.
Frequently asked questions
- Who contacts waitlisted patients when a slot opens?
- Your team decides who is offered an opening and reaches out, working from the cancellations and waitlist requests Katie captured. Separately, practices that turn on Sallie, MedReception AI's outbound scheduling agent, can have her phone patients due for recall and offer open times.
- What if a waitlisted patient calls to check her status?
- Katie takes down the request and tells the patient a coordinator will follow up, so she is not left wondering whether her request was lost.
- Does this work for surgical dates?
- Yes, though surgical openings usually need coordinator handling because of deposits and pre-op steps. Katie captures the request and your surgical coordinator takes it from there.
- Can Katie tell callers where they stand on the list?
- Katie does not promise a position. She tells callers what your practice wants them to know, for example that openings are offered at the coordinator's discretion, and records the request.
Ready to implement this for your PatientNow practice?
Book a demo and we'll walk through your consult intake, treatment inquiry handling, scheduling, financing questions, and post-treatment call rules for PatientNow.