By Jennifer LaRocca, RDH Production Coach at Polished & Profitable Advisors
Let’s face it – there are countless metrics that claim to be the ‘best’ to help dental practice owners run an efficient and profitable dental practice. These are typically: 1) New Patients 2) Production and 3) Collections. Yes, new patients is very important and costs about $250-300 to acquire one. Considering that cost, let’s concentrate on your existing patients to increase your profitability first.
Focus on Existing Loyal Patients
Right now, you have countless fans living inside your very own practice. Are they getting the attention you feel they deserve? And what does this even mean, “getting the attention they deserve?” If you’re familiar with the term “Re-appointment percentage” you’re one step ahead. If not, let’s review:
Re-appointment Percentage
“Re-appoint” means a patient is leaving today’s hygiene appointment with their next hygiene appointment scheduled. What is your success rate? Dentists and hygienists often think they are at 100% re-appointment, but that is rarely true. If you are familiar with this number, how are you measuring it – by hand or with the help of software? Do you know the average or top tier re-appointment %?
DID YOU KNOW? RE-APPOINTING 80% OF YOUR HYGIENE PATIENTS WILL RESULT IN A NEARLY 50% DECREASE OF PATIENTS AFTER 2 YEARS.
Example:
To put this in perspective, you will need to recruit an entire new patient base every decade. Imagine the marketing costs to replace these patients! If we use our numbers from above, the cost would be $250,000 conservatively. Instead of replacing them, let’s focus on re-appointing your patients. It’s the path of least resistance and more economical for your bottom line.
To successfully retain your existing patient base, consider your options. You could re-appoint patients 95% of the time at their hygiene appointment or chase them down via phone call and/or text. It’s
expensive to have your team contact your existing patients. Creating a system to successfully track re-appointing patients will pay for itself.
DID YOU KNOW? IT TAKES A MINIMUM OF 7 PHONE CALLS TO RESCHEDULE A PATIENT?
Stop paying to keep your patients and start re-appointing! If you’d like help training your team on re-appointing patients, contact Polished & Profitable Advisors at hello@polishedprofits.com or schedule a phone call here. Happy re-appointing!