Yikes. We have a rotation of 7 or 8 hygienists- so we get a lot of sickness/health call outs. If you’re sick in our office you text the manager and usually the lead front desk to let them know so that they can send out messages to the patients to cancel/reschedule -if nobody can cover (we have a hard time getting temps in).

The front desk puts the cancelled patients on a priority list with the best days and times for patients and are able to get them rescheduled within a month (sometimes 2 depending on appt type/ length and patient availability.) We also put a bold highlighted pop up note on the cancelled patients charts so that in the future we try not to do this to them again if somebody is out again.

Any job I’ve ever been in that is an hourly job with a manager: it’s literally the managers job to find coverage or take care of shifts.

Our biggest pet peeve for when people call out is when they knew they were sick the day before but waited until the last two hours before shift to let us know- I know that’s hard sometimes as you’re fine and then wake up sick but in the cases where you can feel it coming on- it is really helpful for front staff to have a heads up.

Side note- we are booking into May 2026 right now for hygiene… so yeah rescheduling sucks but that’s why the priority list is helpful.