The Christmas closure checklist for clinics.

The short version: your January gets filled in November and December. Tell patients your closure dates early, book every regular's first visit back before they leave, keep someone on cancellations over the break, and write next year's plan before your team's end-of-year meeting.

Most clinics treat the Christmas break as a gap in the diary. It's really a six-week stretch either side of that gap. Patients who leave in December without a next visit drift into February. Patients who don't know you're closed find out by calling a phone nobody answers. None of that is hard to fix if you start now.

Christmas Day falls on a Friday this year, so most states take Monday 28 December in place of Boxing Day, and New Year's Day is Friday 1 January. Check your own state's list before you set your dates.

Now (late October): decide and set up

• Pick your closure dates and check them against staff leave. Write them down once and use the same wording everywhere.
• Decide who covers what while you're shut: cancellations for the first week back, the phone, messages and new enquiries. One named person for each, even if it's an hour a day.
• Close the dates in your booking system so online booking can't take appointments on days you're not open.
• Check your automations will keep running. Reminders for the first week of January need to go out while the clinic is closed. Look at the dates on them now, not on 2 January.

Early November: tell patients

Tell them in every place they'll look:

• a text or email to active patients
• a banner on your website and your online booking page
• your Google Business Profile holiday hours
• your phone message and after-hours reply

Saying it early does two jobs. It stops the "I didn't know you were closed" calls, and it reminds people to book their last visit before the break while there's still room in the diary.

Mid-November to mid-December: book January at every checkout

This is the step that fills January. Every patient who checks out from now until you close should be asked one question at the desk: "Let's get your first visit back in January booked in now, while the times are open."

• The practitioner says when they want to see the patient next, in the room.
• The front desk books it before the patient pays.
• If the patient can't commit to a time, book a provisional one and tell them they can move it by text.

Track how many December patients leave with a January booking. If it's under half, the checkout is where to look.

Early December: chase the gaps

• Regulars without a January booking: pull the list of patients you've seen in the last two months who have no future appointment, and contact them.
• Gaps before Christmas: when someone cancels in December, offer the time to patients booked later that week. People like being seen before the break.
• Gift vouchers, if you sell them: say so in the closure message. It's the one week of the year people are looking.

The last week before you close

• Update the phone message, after-hours reply and booking page with your reopening date.
• Send a short reminder to anyone booked in the first week of January.
• Print or export the January diary so whoever covers cancellations can see it without logging in from a beach.

January: the first-week recall list

On your first day back, pull every patient seen in November or December who still has no future booking. That list is your first week of re-engagement. The longer it sits, the harder those patients are to bring back.

Write next year's plan before the team meeting

If you run an end-of-year meeting with your team, write the plan before it, not during it. Walking in with a direction makes the meeting about how, not what.

Block half a day in November and answer five questions:

1. What worked this year? Name the two or three things that made the biggest difference.
2. What didn't? Name the things you'll stop doing.
3. What are the numbers? Revenue, rebooking rate, cancellations and how full each practitioner was.
4. What are the one or two priorities for next year? Not ten. Two.
5. What does each priority need: a person, a budget, a system or a decision?

Then work backwards. If a priority is "fewer gaps in the diary", the first quarter's job might be fixing checkout and following up every cancellation.

Templates

Where Robyn fits

The two lists in this checklist (regulars without a January booking, and the first-week recall in January) are the ones that get skipped when the desk is busy. Robyn works your rebooking report, texts those patients in your clinic's voice and handles the replies, with every message checked against AHPRA guidance. See how Robyn works.