Guide
How to keep track of family appointments without dropping one
The text arrives at 7pm: your appointment is tomorrow at 9.40. You have a meeting at 9.30. Nobody forgot the appointment, exactly. It was just never anywhere you would see it in time to do something about it.
Why appointments slip
Appointments get made in a hurry, standing at a front desk or on the phone in a car park. The details go onto a card, into a text thread, or nowhere. By the time the reminder comes it is too late to move anything.
When you are also keeping track for children, a partner or a parent, the number of appointments multiplies and the places they are recorded multiply with it.
One calendar, entered on the spot
Put every appointment for everyone you look after into one calendar, before you leave the desk or hang up the phone. Start the title with the person's name, so a week reads at a glance.
Add the address and the phone number to the entry. The day you are running late is not the day to go looking for them.
A reminder that leaves time to act
A reminder an hour before is only good for getting out the door. Set a second one two days ahead. That is the one that lets you swap a shift, arrange a pickup or ring to reschedule without a cancellation fee.
What each appointment needs
Most missed appointments are not missed. They are wasted, because something was not brought. Keep a short note with each one.
- A referral, if it is a specialist. A referral from a GP normally lasts 12 months, so check the date before a follow-up visit
- Medicare card and any concession or health fund card
- Forms the clinic asked you to fill in beforehand
- Your own questions, written down, because you will forget them in the room
- For children, their immunisation history statement if it has been asked for. It comes from the Australian Immunisation Register through your Medicare online account
The ones nobody books
The appointments that slip furthest are the ones with no deadline: the dental check-up, the eye test, your own overdue GP visit. Give each person in the house a rough rhythm and put the next one in the calendar as a task to book, not a vague intention.
Where Mirey fits
Tell Mirey about an appointment in plain words as soon as you have made it, and what you need to bring. She proposes the task and the reminders, including the early one, and you review them before they are saved.
She does not book, cancel or ring a clinic for you. She is not a medical service and she gives no health advice. Mirey is currently free to use on the web.