Bookings out of hours

A clinic’s phone does not stop ringing at seven in the evening. It stops being answered. Fourteen hours pass between closing and opening again, and sixty pass over a weekend. It is the largest block of time in the week and it is the one with nobody listening.

Who calls at that hour

Not someone with an emergency. People with emergencies go to A&E. The person calling at the end of the day has been at work and has only now had a minute, and that is exactly the patient a clinic wants: fixed hours, rarely misses, pays on time.

It is also the person least willing to call again. They have already put this off for a week.

The three possible answers

There are three ways to answer out of hours, and only one costs neither money nor people.

• Let it ring and call back in the morning. Free, and it loses whoever booked elsewhere that same evening
• Put somebody on call. It solves everything and is the most expensive option there is, for one or two calls a night
• Answer without putting anybody on, and pass only the urgent ones through to the clinic

What a clinic has to decide first

The third option only works if the clinic settles three things in advance, and they are its decisions, not the technology’s.

• Which slots can be offered without confirmation, and which always wait for reception to see in the morning
• What counts as urgent, and the number it goes to when it is
• Whether the patient is confirmed by message that same evening or the next day

None of these is a technical question. They are the ones the clinic already answers every day at the desk, only written down once.

What it is worth, concretely

The arithmetic is simple and worth doing with your own numbers. Count the calls arriving after closing in a normal week, multiply by four, then by the value of a first appointment. That is the size of the block of time with nobody listening.