Patient formally discharged from clinic and i'm worried about them
Our clinic has a policy where if you miss a certain number of appointments (without calling 24 hr in advance), you can be discharged from the clinic. Patients are sent letters if they miss appointments letting them know about this policy. And obviously, special circumstances are taken into account (like if somebody gets sick unexpectedly, or if they can't make it due to inclement weather), but it still requires a patient to communicate with the clinic.
Well, a patient of mine recently got discharged. The thing is, without giving away any personal info, this patient does have legitimate reasons they might have missed their appointment. Granted, they should have called and let us know, but I still feel really bad. I literally feel like I'm going to throw up because I'm worried about them.
There's nothing I can do at this point. It wasn't my decision to discharge the patient, and this is a well known clinic policy. I just don't know what to do, or if there is anything I can do to help prevent this in the future, or if there was anything I should have done to prevent this. Mostly I just needed to talk about it.
Edit: thank you all for the responses. I am not going to go into any more detail just because I'm paranoid about potentially posting identifiable info, but I can say that most of what the comments recommended was considered prior to the decision being made.
Exit 2: I should also add we do telehealth. Obviously that doesn't help if you don't have internet or phone service, but it does make it easier for people who live far away