It is always a surprise when you print off an Incomplete Treatment Plan Report on your Dental Software and see how many patients have treatment they have not started or finished.

This one piece of information sends all Dentists into a spin.

I hear Dentists so worried about their New Patient Numbers (and yes this is very important) but they forget about the people who are already their patients.

It is probably unrealistic to ever believe that 100% of all your patients will go ahead with treatment but have a hard look at the number of patients you have who have not gone ahead with treatment. Now is a good time to do something about it.

One of the first steps when you see a huge number of patients with incomplete treatment is to reassess how you present treatment to patients and the process of how patients make their ongoing appointments and don’t cancel these appointments. You do need to see if there is a weakness here and fix it.

I want to focus on what do you do once the problem is there and how to fix it.

Having an excellent reactivation system in your practice is crucial to be able to keep on top of patients who leave without an appointment for the treatment that has been diagnosed and planned for them.

I spoke last week about the importance of having systems in place that are easy to follow and understand. Every Practice should have a Reactivation System in place.

The loss each month to Practices because Patients are not followed up is massive. You have to remind yourself that we are talking about patients that may have been coming to the practice for a long period of time, you know them, the patient knows and likes you but you lose touch with them and sometimes never hear from them again.

If your Practice does not have a Reactivation System in place then start one today.

Your Dental Software will give you all the information to start with. Print a report of Incomplete Treatment for patients you have not seen within the last 2 years. Look at a way to reach out to them with either a card, email, or letter or the most effectively a call. During a call to the patient you can ask if they are ok, you can catch up with them and then let them know why you are calling and look at a way to help them get started.

During the reactivation process you have an opportunity to find out more about what might be standing in the way of the patient going ahead with treatment and looking for a solution to help them.

This blog features simple practical ideas that are easy to implement tomorrow in your Dental Office, impacting immediately on your Patients’ Dental  Phone Experiences, and ultimately, improving your practice profitability.

At present I have availability for two new private clients. For more information on how I can improve your Dental Office’s Phone Numbers contact me, Jayne Bandy at  jayne@theDPE.com