Do you measure how many patients come in when they're due for a prophy? Are you satisfied with your results? Although benchmarks for recall success rate are difficult to find, a goal of 75-80 percent makes sense.
To keep your patients coming back for their dental cleanings, you need an organized protocol to contact them. There are a variety of ways to contact patients these days, from phone calls and letters, to emails and text messages.
But when should you use which one? What should you say in your email or on the phone? And how you can you make sure that your office manager is being successful? Having a written protocol with dates and tracking will solve all these needs.
To establish a protocol for your practice, start with running reports in your dental practice management software. In your software program, you have the ability to run reports targeting patients due in a particular month — "without an attached appointment."
You can also choose exactly what information you want for these patients — name, cellphone, work phone, email address. With the ability to find patients due and not scheduled, you can set up a protocol for your office manager — and you can track her success.
Looking at the variety of contact methods, I recommend starting with the least expensive method first. If you are successful with an email or text as the first contact, then you have saved money and accomplished your goal.
Next, move to phone calls and as a last resort, the
Finally, track your performance. If your office manager counts up how many patients she schedules each month from the list, you can establish your practice's recall success rate and find out how you are doing.
Once you know your performance, you can set a goal to improve. Improving recall success rate is an important way to increase your hygienists' productivity and help patients stay healthy.
