Where did Mrs Patel go?
The report of findings went well. The chiropractor recommended a course of visits, the patient agreed, and the first few appointments were booked before she left. Then one gets cancelled by text on a Tuesday morning. Reception moves it to 'will call to rebook'. She never calls, and nobody notices for five weeks, when the chiropractor mentions at a team meeting that they have not seen her.
Multiply that by every patient on a plan across every practitioner, and the clinic has a slow leak that no single screen reveals. The diary looks full. The plan, as a thing, does not exist anywhere except in the notes and in the chiropractor's head.
The diary only knows about appointments
Most clinic software, Cliniko and Jane included, is built around the appointment. A care plan is usually a line in the treatment notes or a package on the invoice, and neither is linked to what is actually in the diary. So the question 'who is on a plan and has nothing booked in the next fortnight' cannot be answered without opening records one by one.
The front desk is also answering phones, taking payments and checking people in. Following up a gap relies on someone remembering the gap exists. That is the real cause: not a lack of effort, but a lack of any list to work from.
What the gaps cost the clinic
Patients who leave a plan early often do not get the result they came for, and some of them tell friends that chiropractic did not work for them. The chiropractor loses continuity. Diary time that was expected to be full is empty at short notice. And the owner, looking at monthly figures, sees new patients arriving but a visit average that will not move, without being able to say why.
| Signal | What it usually means | Who should act |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled, not rebooked | Life got in the way, easy to recover with a call | Front desk, same week |
| No future visit booked mid-plan | Patient booked one at a time and stopped | Front desk, before the next expected visit |
| Two missed visits in a row | Motivation or money has become an issue | Chiropractor, personal call |
| Plan completed, no review booked | Natural end point that was never closed | Front desk, with the chiropractor's note |
How we build a care plan tracker
- We connect to your clinic software through its API or scheduled exports, reading appointments, cancellations and the patient list.
- The chiropractor records the plan in a simple structured form: number of visits, rough spacing and the planned review point. This can be a short template in your existing notes or a field we add.
- Each night the tracker compares booked and attended visits against the plan and assigns every patient a status: on track, gap forming, lapsed or complete.
- Reception gets a morning list, sorted by urgency, with the patient's name, the gap and the last cancellation reason.
- From the list, one click sends a rebooking text or email in your clinic's wording, with a link into your online booking.
- Anything the front desk cannot resolve is passed to the treating chiropractor, with the history attached, so the call they make is informed.
- Outcomes of each follow-up are recorded, so the next person can see what has already been tried.
We keep the tracker inside tools the team already opens, usually a web page or a view in Google Sheets or Microsoft 365, rather than another login. It does not tell anyone what care a patient needs. It only shows where the diary and the agreed plan no longer match.
A different kind of morning at the front desk
Instead of scrolling the diary, reception starts with a list of perhaps a handful of names that need a call or a message today. Gaps are caught when they are one missed visit old, not five weeks old. Chiropractors stop being surprised in team meetings, and the owner can see plan completion by practitioner without building a spreadsheet on a Sunday night.
Patients notice too. A friendly text the day after a cancellation feels like a clinic that pays attention, which is what most of them chose you for.
Signs your clinic has this problem
- Nobody can say, today, how many patients are on an active care plan.
- Cancellations go into a 'call back' pile that is rarely cleared.
- Chiropractors keep their own lists of patients they are worried about.
- The visit average looks flat even though new patient numbers are fine.
- You find out a patient has stopped coming when they rebook months later with a new problem.