Q: I have a lot of patients of record, but many of them haven't been in for years. What should I do to reconnect with them?
A: Working to reschedule inactive patients is an important component of practice management. For many years, the industry's standard definition of an inactive patient has been any patient who has not been in the office for 18 months. However, you should not be applying this standard if your intention is to increase practice production, develop a long-standing practice, and have a great career. Consider this: data indicates that over the course of a 36-year career, most practices will lose approximately $3 to $6 million of potential revenue from patients who are inactive, including those who never come back.
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If your goal is to increase practice production, inactive patients should be defined as any patient who does not have his or her next appointment scheduled. We apply this standard and recommend reaching a target of having 96% to 98% of patients scheduled at all times. Initially, this may seem like a difficult goal. However, if you change your approach and system, you can have a dramatic impact on increasing annual practice production.
A simple strategy to help you to reach this goal is to set aside a designated time every day to contact inactive patients. This makes attempting to schedule inactive patients a part of the front desk staff's everyday tasks. Many practices that aren't intentional about establishing this habit tell us that they only contact inactive patients when a front desk person has extra time, which is fairly rare. As a result, many patients become off cycle, which causes a loss of revenue. Others leave the practice, many of whom could have been retained if the practice had reached out and contacted them. You only need to establish a simple system, such as contacting patients three times by text, phone, and email over the course of several weeks as a customer service reminder about maintaining their excellent oral health.
This concept can work extremely well. In fact, we have seen practices increase their number of active patients to 96% in under 90 days simply by applying the strategy of making it a daily task to contact inactive patients.
Roger P. Levin, DDS, is the CEO and founder of Levin Group, a leading practice management consulting firm that has worked with more than 30,000 practices to increase production. A recognized expert on dental practice management and marketing, Levin has written 67 books and more than 4,000 articles and regularly presents seminars in the United States and around the world.
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