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The average dental practice is growing its patient base by about 1.8 to 2 percent a year. That's it. So that means for about every one thousand active patients, you're netting maybe twenty.

Which means a practice telling itself it's "doing great" because it's pulling in 30 to 50 new patients a month is, in reality, is only treading water. The front door is open, but the back door is wide open too. And nobody's paying attention.

Steve Jensen from Dental Intelligence had us on the Growth in Dentistry podcast recently to talk about exactly this — why retention is the quiet number that's killing most practices, and what to actually do about it. Here's the part of the conversation worth pulling out.

Why Spending On Marketing While Ignoring Retention Is a Losing Game

If you're spending real money on Google Ads, Facebook, mailers, signage, or whatever - and your patient base isn't actually growing, the marketing isn't the problem. 

The leakage is!

Paula said it plainly on the episode: most of the patients you're losing aren't leaving because they're unhappy. They're leaving because nobody followed up with them. It's as simple as that sometimes. Six months becomes a year. A year becomes eighteen months. And one day they're not on your active patient list anymore, not because they don't like you, but because you never engaged them.

The fact of the matter is... Healthcare professionals care more about health and dentistry than patients do. 
But that's your job to know more and care. It may seem like common sense, but to patients is just another thing that gotta do. So chasing patients down isn't beneath you - it's a requirement for running a business these days! 

The Morning Huddle Is Not a Reading of the Schedule

Eight out of ten offices we walk into are "doing a huddle." Which usually means somebody is standing in front, reading the schedule out loud to people who can already read a schedule! 

But that's not a huddle. That's a meeting nobody is interested in having.

A real huddle is auditing what needs to happen before it happens. It's looking at every patient and asking:

                                                            
• Is there unscheduled treatment for this patient?
                                                            
• Are X-rays due? Is fluoride on the route slip even as an option?
                                                            
• Are there unscheduled family members we can grab while this patient is in the chair?
                                                            
• Is there a hole in the doctor's schedule?
                                                            
• Is there a hygiene patient with unscheduled work we can fill?
                                                            
• Who left yesterday without a future appointment, and who's calling them today?

All that data and and reporting happens before the team huddles. So by the time everyone is in the room together, you're not just reading the schedule, you're walking through opportunities. 

If you shift into that mindset, your days will be 10x more productive.

Stop Panicking on Day 25

Here's the pattern we see constantly: it's day 25 of the month, the doctor pulls up the numbers, panics, and the team scrambles for the last five days trying to make goal. The goal that was already blown two weeks ago.

You can't fix a month of work starting on day 25. The opportunity has already past.

Pull up the calendar view and look three weeks out. If those days are red, meaning you're nowhere near your daily production goal - that's when the conversation needs to happen. 

Not at the end of the month. Looking ahead two or three weeks, while there's still time to schedule those holes. Then you have a chance at filling them with unscheduled treatment. Or maybe you need to move a hygiene patient over to crossover, and get a family member in. With 5 days left in the month, those types of actions are just not practical.

Most practices are reactive. The top 10 percent performers are scheduled to goal three weeks out.  They know it because they're proactive and look at it every single day. That's the difference.

Follow-Up Is a Calendar, Not a Sticky Note

If a patient leaves without an appointment and somebody writes "call Bob" on a sticky note, Bob is never getting called. We've walked into offices where the front desk monitor looks like a lion's mane of overlapping sticky notes. Nobody is calling the patient buried under twenty other patients reminders.

Follow-ups need a system. A cadence. A date and time. The same way you would set reminders for a hair appointment in your phone for two weeks out - because you know you'll forget otherwise.

If you call a patient today and they don't answer and then you don't call again for two months, you lost them. The momentum has passed. A good follow-up system will tell you who to call, when to call them, what to say, and how many times before you let it go.

Whatever tool you use, Dental Intel, a practice management software's recall function, a literal spreadsheet if that's all you've got... whatever it is, it has to be a good system. 

Not a vibe or a broken system. If its not working and getting you results, it's a bad system.

Two Things a Quarter. That's It.

The thing owners do wrong (younger owners especially) is try to fix everything at once. 

A new marketing plan, a new hygiene exam protocol, a new collections process, a new morning huddle, a new team meeting structure, all rolled out the same day. None of it sticks because none of it gets executed all the way through.

Pick two things per quarter. That's the whole strategy. If those two things are: "We are actually going to do the morning huddle this way" and "We are going to follow up on every patient who leaves without an appointment," 

You will see your retention number move. Guaranteed. Because you are focusing on it.

One change, done 180 times a year, is massive. Eight changes, done halfway and only for a week but then forgotten, is recipe for failure. 

The math isn't complicated. The discipline is and consistency is. 

The Real Reason Systems Matter More Than Ever

Patient loyalty isn't what it used to be. Team loyalty isn't what it used to be either. The Mary Jo who stayed with a practice for 30 years and who held the whole front office together in her head... she's not coming back.

That era of practice management is over.

Which means the practices that win going forward are the ones with repeatable, documented systems, systems somebody new can step into without the place falling apart. Chick-fil-A doesn't run on the personality of any one employee. Neither should your practice.

That's what retention really is, when you zoom out. It's not a follow-up call. It's a system that makes the follow-up call happen whether your office manager has been there ten years or ten weeks.

Visit Michael & Paula at https://nxlevelconsultants.com
For more tidbits and insights! We would love to hear from you.

This article is based on a recent episode of the Growth in Dentistry podcast, where Mike Dinsio and Paula Quinn of Next Level Consultants joined host Steve Jensen of Dental Intelligence. Full episode wherever you get your podcasts.
https://www.dentalintel.com/podcasts/growth-through-patient-retention-with-michael-dinsio-and-paula-quinn-of-next-level-consultants