The Practicon Viewpoint by Ann Page Griffin

LOST PATIENTS = SEVERE LOSS OF REVENUE

All dental offices lose patients occasionally. Patients move. Patients pass away. Patients enroll in managed care plans and must seek an office where their plan is accepted. Some who leave may not like a particular aspect of the office ambiance—I once knew a patient who left an excellent office because she did not like the type of music played. Some are lost due to no follow-up when a patient leaves without scheduling the next appointment. Others are lost through holes in the hygiene program, never being enrolled in the regular recare routine. Still others leave due to a disagreement with the payment policies or the treatment modalities. For a wide variety of reasons, patients come and patients go.

Problems arise when multiple patients leave an office so that production declines and profit suffers. The difficulties are exacerbated when there are too few new patients to replace the ones who leave.

Look at the following chart; substitute your own fees for, perhaps, a hygiene visit, a single restoration, and a more extensive procedure. Multiply the fee charged for a particular type of procedure by the average number of patients lost per day (1, 2, or 5 in the example). Multiply that number by the number of days worked annually to calculate an annual loss of production. The total annual loss for even one lost patient per day for 190 work days in a year is staggering.

YOUR ANNUAL REVENUE LOSS IS:

If you work 190 days/year and lose:	Spending $150/year	Spending $400/year	Spending $700/year
1 patient/day	$28,500	$76,000	$133,000
2 patients/day	$57,000	$152,000	$266,000
5 patients/day	$142,000	$380,000	$665,000

Suggestion: Share this information with staff to drive home the importance of enumerating and analyzing the reasons patients leave the practice. Comprehension of what causes patients to leave should lead to diligent work to correct problems and retain patients.