According to Sondra Brown, Tripler Army Medical Center Public Affairs, rate of No Shows for military treatment facility appointments are at an average of 5.78% and have reached as high as 9.01%. Those kinds of numbers are a very shocking wake up from an otherwise peaceful appointment making process. If you take into account the amount of appointments being made every day, the nearly 6% missed ones really start to add up. Soldiers have access to a variety of professional care and guidance and are free to make appointments for these services. When an appointment is made, it is the Soldier's responsibility to either cancel the appointment in a timely manner or show up for these obligations. When you miss an appointment it costs the army time, money, and it can deprecate your medical readiness. Above all, missing appointments is a direct violation of the Army Values.
Every time you make an appointment, a medical, or otherwise qualified personnel, is tasked out to the time slot in which you made your appointment. If you were to not show up, you would be wasting that qualified individual’s time. This time could be used for a variety of useful tasks that might otherwise be overlooked. They will be waiting to see if you are running late, and when they finally decide that you are not going to show up, they will have wasted that whole time slot. Also, if you are using that time slot, it means that other soldiers cannot make an appointment at that same moment. This means longer wait times when anybody wants to use a medical facility. Soldiers could end up waiting months just for a one hour dental appointment. Not only that, missing an appointment interrupts the whole process and creates unnecessary additional work for schedulers, providers, and staff. Our goal is to support the organization that supports us by meeting all appointments.
If the cost in time and effort is not enough to persuade you away from becoming a No Show, you should take into