How to Support Periods of High Patient Demand

Aim to offer more open slots than your weekly appointment goal to account for cancellations and no-shows. Adding extra availability—especially mornings, evenings, or an occasional weekend—helps patients find care sooner and increases your chances of hitting your weekly goal.

If you don’t want to change your recurring working hours, you can simply add or remove availability blocks manually for specific days or weeks.

Double-check that this setting is turned on in your Provider Portal. It’s essential for accepting new patients; if it’s off, only follow-ups can be scheduled. RDs who keep new patient bookings on have the most stable schedules and are most likely to be at their caseload goals. Rather than toggling off entirely, you should strategically add calendar blocks for the days you’re unavailable. This ensures patients can still find you—and book ahead—during high-demand periods.

Consider shortening your booking window so patients can book next-day or even same-day appointments. Setting this to “0” or “1” makes it easier to fill last-minute openings and helps new patients get the care they need.

If possible, raise the number of initial appointments you’ll take per day. This boosts your opportunity to connect with new patients and fill your schedule faster.

Try increasing your caseload goal (and aim to have a goal of 5 or more if you're part-time and 20 or more if you're full-time) This helps our system match you with more patients and ensures your open slots are filled efficiently.

Also, please remember that Nourish's scheduling algorithm helps you stay at your caseload target by purposefully booking extra appointments above your goal to account for cancellations, so you don’t need to manually shut off new patient bookings. For example, if your goal is 25 weekly appointments, we may book 29 appointments to account for no-shows/late cancels that typically occur on the platform.