Fill empty physio tables and confirm tomorrow

The empty five o’clock

You are at the table. Someone rang at noon and cancelled the five o’clock. The person who called at 11:40 was told this evening was full. Their name is on a scrap, or in a transcript, or in a note you meant to ring after this patient.

You cannot ring them. One hand is under a knee. The other is on the shin. If there is someone at the desk, they are taking a card. Five o’clock stays empty. The first-visit caller who rings at four is told you are full, and they dial the next clinic.

The names are already there. What is missing is a pair of hands that can pick up the phone and offer five o’clock.

Those names are not one job. Some of them wanted a follow-up with Maria. Some of them wanted a first visit. Some of them wanted tomorrow confirmed. If you put those on the same list with the same script, the assistant will drop a new patient into a thirty-minute hole, or offer Maria’s time to someone who has never been. Each list needs a reason you chose, a length, a therapist, and a rule for when the call ends.

Start with the lists whose next step is a time

Today’s cancels that still sit inside the notice you set. The assistant rings the next name on the waitlist that matches that length and that therapist, checks the live book, offers the time that is actually free, books it, and sends the SMS itself.

Put tomorrow’s unconfirmed follow-ups on that list next. The call is an offer to keep the time, or to move it as one change. It is not a consultation about the shoulder. It is not a reminder to do the exercises.

A covering therapist on Thursday changes what can be offered. The colleague may not take Maria’s follow-ups, may not take first visits, may not be in the same room. That is a booking rule. If the assistant cannot see it, Thursday afternoon is spent ringing people to move them. If the calendar cannot be reached, it takes a callback. It does not guess a Thursday.

Do not open with everyone you have not seen since March. That export contains the moved, the finished, the angry, and the people who asked not to be telephoned. A person looks at a list before a machine rings it. The first fortnight should be names someone in the building would have been willing to dial themselves.

If you closed in August, the follow-ups that were due then now sit on top of September. Do not dump both months on the first Monday back. Batch them the way you would if you were dialling: a handful someone has read, then another.

A waitlist is not a first-visit pile

The person who rang at 11:40 and was told you were full is not automatically the right person for five o’clock.

If they wanted a follow-up with Maria, and five o’clock is Maria’s follow-up length, they are the right name. If they wanted a first visit, and five o’clock is thirty minutes, they are not. Length first, then the therapist, then the name.

Keep two waitlists if you run both types, or one list with the type marked. An assistant that rings “anyone who asked for a time” will fill Maria’s gap with a new patient, and the evening runs late.

A coach who asked for a player is a first-visit name unless that player is already on the book. Do not offer a cancelled follow-up to the coach. Do not let the outbound call become advice from the sideline.

When it offers the time, it checks the book you already use. If that time has already been taken by someone at the desk, it does not invent another. It goes to the next name, or it stops.

Tomorrow’s follow-ups

Six people are due tomorrow. Two have not confirmed. One wrote that they might be late from work. Nobody rings them.

A no-show on Maria’s Tuesday is an empty table you already paid for, and a series that then has to be rebuilt by hand. The outbound call confirms they still come, takes a new time if they do not, and says the cancel notice you already use.

It does not add “don’t forget the exercises.” That sentence is treatment. It does not add “the shoulder should be better by now.” That sentence is a clinical reading. It does not ask how the pain has been, unless you want a note, because that question is how the call turns into an examination.

If they want to move, it is one change: find tomorrow, release it, place the new one, same type, same therapist. If Maria is full, it follows the rule you wrote. It does not offer Nikos to sound helpful.

If they want to cancel, treat it as a cancel. Release the time. If the notice still allows a refill, that name goes onto today’s waitlist work, not into a transcript for the morning.

Confirm by SMS after the call, in the language of the original booking — 70+ languages. The SMS names the therapist, the type, and the time. It does not name a plan.

The next session is a time, not a course

A series you already booked is administration. Inventing the rest of the course is not.

The assistant can ring and offer the next follow-up you already allow — Maria, the follow-up length, the next gap that is free. It can move one, cancel one, or add the next one when you said that is allowed.

It cannot say they will need ten sessions. It cannot say they should keep coming. It cannot say the fund will cover eight. How long it takes is a clinical sentence. It does not belong on this telephone.

Colleagues will ask for a shortcut. Just tell them to book the next six, we will see how it goes. That shortcut is how an automated voice becomes the person who decided the course. If the next session was safe to offer, offer that one. If you wanted six in the book, a person writes six, or you allow the assistant to offer one at a time.

A reminder that they have a time tomorrow is administration. A reminder that they should do the home exercises is treatment. Do not put the exercise list in the outbound script. It will be read out.

If they say it hurts more on a call you started

People tell outbound callers things they would not walk in with. You ring about five o’clock and they mention the shoulder has been worse since Sunday. They ask whether they should still come. They ask whether they should ice it first.

That sentence ends the list work.

Record it, in their words. Stop offering times as if nothing was said. Write a note for you. Do not say they should still come. Do not say they should rest. Do not say take the five o’clock anyway and we will look. Do not book a longer first-visit type because the pain sounded worse.

You placed the call. They did not ring to present a worse shoulder. Tell them it is an assistant. A person who does not know may hear a captured acknowledgement as advice about whether to come.

You keep a short list of phrases that stop the conversation. It hurts more. Should I still come. Ice. Exercises. How many sessions. The list has to be short, or it fires on everything. And it has to go to a note you will actually read, not to an email someone opens after the last patient.

It does not tell the caller what the symptom means, or to wait, or to stay home. It captures what they said. You decide.

If they still want the five o’clock after that, you decide whether the booking stands. The assistant may keep a time they already accepted before the sentence, and flag it. It may not talk them into coming, or out of coming.

Hours, the message, and the list you must not dump

Late afternoon reaches people who work. Mid-morning reaches the people who cancelled and the people who are already on tomorrow’s list. Early evening is a choice you make in writing, and it has to end before you would be embarrassed to have made the call yourself. Sunday night about a Tuesday follow-up is how a sensible setup becomes a complaint.

In a Greek clinic the second busy window is often after work, when you are at the table and the desk is empty. That window is for inbound capture, not for ringing the waitlist. Set the outbound hours so they do not collide with the evening list you are trying to work in the room.

Before it names even a freed five o’clock, it confirms it has the right person — the name on the waitlist, or the name on tomorrow’s book. A family phone is normal. If a child or someone at their work has picked up, the assistant asks for the patient or offers to call back. It does not leave the reason with whoever answered.

A message names the clinic, says it is an assistant, and gives the reason at the level of a time has come free, tomorrow’s session, or please call the clinic. No diagnosis. No ice. No session count. “Please call Physio Kifisia about your five o’clock” is already enough. “Please call, the shoulder needs another six” is a clinical disclosure to whoever was holding the phone. Do not add “nothing to worry about” to soften the ask — that phrase is treatment.

If the only message you can agree still names ice, a session count, or a shoulder, do not leave one. Try again later, then write a note.

Retries: two or three over a few hours for a same-day refill, then the next name. Tomorrow’s confirmations: two attempts, then a note the desk can see, not a fourth try at nine in the evening.

Lists this assistant must not run

A recall of everyone who came once in the spring is not a waitlist. It is a marketing export. If you want those names rung, a person looks at them first. The assistant does not decide that a shoulder from March is due.

A “how are you after last week” list is a consult. It stays with you. The assistant speaking the patient’s language does not make that call safe to automate.

Do not export the whole series book and let the assistant chase every missing week. The chase is how a machine starts saying they should keep coming. You mark the next session as offerable, or you keep the name. Everything else stays off the machine.

If you remind people that a time they already have still stands, use the sentence on the booking. Do not add a local reading. If you would not let a new person at the desk improvise that sentence, do not let the assistant.

A coach list is not an outbound list. The assistant can take a first-visit request inbound from a coach. It cannot ring through a pile of clubs and offer tables. That decision stays with you.

What you configure first

One list: today’s cancelled tables that still sit inside your notice, matched by length and therapist. Live times only. SMS on. Quiet hours set. The treatment phrases live on the outbound path, pointed at a note you will read. A rule the clinic can see: outbound scripts contain no ice, no exercises, no session count, no “you should still come.”

Tell whoever treats what the assistant will not do, in writing, before the first name goes out. Agree the pain-on-the-call rule before a patient hears a clinical word from a voice that cannot explain it.

Look at the first twenty completed calls — rebooked, refused, no answer, flagged, asked about ice — before you add tomorrow’s confirmations. Add “next session in a series” only when you are marking those names, not when someone has exported the whole book.

Outbound does not change the rates. They live on the pricing section of the home page.