You have already paid for the appointments you never get to use.
Every slot is funded and staffed in advance. When a patient does not arrive, and nobody else takes it, that money buys nothing. Add the hours spent answering a phone that never stops, and there are two numbers worth putting in front of your board. This page works out both.
The capacity lost to missed appointments.
Four inputs, no hidden steps. If you know your real missed-appointment rate, use it — the default is deliberately conservative.
Your service
Start from a typical service, then move the sliders to match yours.
Arithmetic only, over 48 operating weeks. An estimate to start a conversation, not a forecast.
Model this properly with usAnd the time spent answering the phone.
The appointment model above values clinical capacity. Front Door is a different saving: the hours your reception team spends taking calls that do not need a person to take them.
Your reception
How many calls come in, and how long each one really takes.
Arithmetic only, over 48 operating weeks. Time released, not posts removed.
Model this properly with usIt is time released, not posts removed. We are not going to help you build a headcount business case, and CliniCall is designed to augment reception rather than replace it. The value is the 8am queue getting shorter and your team being free for the patients in front of them.
It moves work, it does not only remove it. Every call Front Door takes creates a summary a clinician then reviews. That review is far quicker than a phone call and it happens when the clinician chooses rather than when the phone rings — but it is not nothing, and we have not netted it off above.
Every assumption, on the table.
We would rather you trust a smaller number you can defend than repeat a bigger one you cannot. Here is exactly what the model above does.
- Appointments a year = appointments a week × 48 operating weeks.
- Missed a year = appointments a year × your missed-appointment rate.
- Capacity lost = missed appointments × cost of one missed appointment.
- Recovered = missed appointments × the share you set, valued at the same unit cost.
- Reception hours released = calls a week × 48 × the share Front Door handles × average minutes per call, converted to hours.
That is the whole model. There is no adjustment factor, no benchmark curve and no assumed uplift working quietly in the background.
It is not a forecast, a guarantee, or a cashable saving. Recovered capacity is clinical time put back into use — which usually shows up as more patients seen against the same budget, rather than as money returned.
It is a starting point for a conversation with your finance and operations colleagues, and a hypothesis a pilot can test against your own data.
The numbers we measure with you from week one.
Agreed before deployment and reported against throughout, so the business case is built from your service rather than from our marketing. Which of these apply depends on which of the four products is in scope.
Confirmation rate
The share of appointments where the patient has actively confirmed, declined or rebooked — rather than simply been sent a message. This is the leading indicator: everything else follows from knowing the truth earlier.
Decline lead-time
How far ahead of the appointment a patient tells you they cannot come. Moving this from hours to days is what makes a freed slot usable. A cancellation at 8am on the day is not the same asset as one three days out.
Backfill rate and time-to-refill
What proportion of released slots were taken by another patient, and how long that took. This is the number that turns a reduction in missed appointments into recovered clinical capacity.
Administrative time released
Calls your team no longer has to make or take. Measured with the service rather than estimated for it, because the honest figure is more useful to you than a flattering one.
Calls answered, and how fast the patient hears back
Where Front Door is in scope: the share of inbound calls answered rather than abandoned, and the time from a patient ringing to being told their appointment. The second number is the one patients actually feel, and it is the one most services have never been able to see.
Recovered capacity is productivity without new workforce.
CliniCall does not add clinicians, theatres or beds. It makes more use of the ones that are already funded — which is the specific thing the current policy environment is asking providers to do.
Figures from published NHS England data, the NHS 10 Year Health Plan and the 2025 Spending Review. Cited as context for the problem, not as claims about CliniCall.
Model this against your real data.
Send us your specialty, your appointment volume and your published missed-appointment rate, and we will come back with a worked estimate you can put in front of your board — whether or not you go any further with us.