Skip to content
Back to Blog

940: Metric Mondays: Hygiene Re-Appointment Percentage – Miranda Beeson

You will always need new patients. But you also need to keep your current patients active — especially through hygiene! In this episode, Kirk Behrendt brings back Miranda Beeson, ACT’s director of education, to break down why hygiene re-appointment matters and what you can do to improve your numbers. To learn the easiest way to increase revenue without chasing production, listen to Episode 940 of The Best Practices Show!

 

Learn More About Miranda:

Learn More About ACT Dental:

More Helpful Links for a Better Practice & a Better Life:

Episode Resources:

Main Takeaways:

  • Aim to have 85% or higher in hygiene re-appointment.
  • Assess your recare, patient education, and scheduling systems.
  • Always pre-schedule patients before they leave for their next recare visit.
  • Don't just focus on getting new patients. Find ways to reactivate inactive patients.

Quotes:

“Active patients is one that most people have probably paid attention to over time. That's the total number of unique patients who've had any type of visit — hygiene, emergency, limited exam, restorative — within the past 18 months. Now, some people might question 12 months, 18 months, 24 months. You do want to look at your practice management software or your analytics platform to see what that measure of time is around active patients. For us, we work within an 18-month timeframe. The industry, in general, does. Our clients who are working with, say, Dental Intel, everything is measured in that 18-month window to be considered active. So, this is your entire pool of engaged patients who consider your office their dental home. Now, on the other side of that is active hygiene patients. Your active hygiene patients are a part of that active patient count, but this is how many unique patients have been in for a hygiene-specific visit that's preventative or periodontal maintenance of some sort in the past 18 months. So, again, it's a subset of your active patient base, but it's one of the most important ones to track because it's telling us how many of those patients are consistently tethered to our practice.” (1:35—2:53) -Miranda

“Here's what the active patient count tells you: it's how many patients are connected to your practice. So, a benchmark for one full-time equivalent provider would be somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 active patients. Now, there's going to be some variation on that model. I actually just did a podcast with Dental Intelligence a couple days ago. We were talking about this and how the active patient count, especially how many new patients you might need to be bringing into that count, is going to matter depending on if you have a high volume, low profit practice or a low volume, high profit practice. So, if your annual patient value is $1,000 per patient, you're not going to need as many active patients to hit $1.5 million. Maybe you only need 1,500. But if you're at $500 per patient as an APV, you're going to need twice as many to get to that same $1.5 million. So, to some degree, that 1,200 to 1,500 is a general benchmark, and you need to look at the specifics of your practice to get tailored more to what you specifically need.” (3:27—4:35) -Miranda

“You can do more with the patients that you have, and it’s going to make it that much easier for you because, like you said, when it’s the patients that are the ideal or avatar patients for your practice who value what you do, they're going to say yes to more and your APV is going to go up; that annual patient value goes up. Then, the number of active patients that you need to support your practice isn't going to be as high, and you won't have that same amount of pressure to continue to grow, grow, grow.” (6:06—6:31) -Miranda

“You do have to be aware of, is my active patient count growing, shrinking, or maintaining? You need to recognize, what is my annual patient value? Can I sustain if we shrink a little bit and have some attrition, or do I need to be growing? But the most important part is, look at the general number. If you're starting from scratch, am I somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 per full-time provider? That's the general benchmark that you're looking at. Then, of those active patients, you want to look at how many of them that have been in in the last 18 months have been in for hygiene, because that active hygiene patient count tells a similar story, but it provides even more insight into how the patients are truly connected to your practice. How much do they really trust you and your recommendations? How much do they really value the care that you provide for them? Patients who stay current with their hygiene visits are more likely to accept treatment. They're also more likely to refer others to your practice, which is also great — less work for you on the front end bringing new people in.” (6:31—7:38) -Miranda

“When you look at your active patient count, you want at least 85% of that active patient count currently also considered an active hygiene patient. So, the easy thing to look at is pull that data and say, am I between 65% and 70%? Am I between 70% and 79%? Maybe I have a little room for improvement. What can we do as a team to try to build that active hygiene count? We actually talked last podcast about the KPI of hygiene re-appointment percentage. So, that plays in this too, making sure we are pre-scheduling before people leave for their next recare visit.” (7:46—8:24) -Miranda

“Looking at recare systems, patient education, and our scheduling habits, how are we engaging during that patient experience? If we are below that 70% mark, it's pretty likely that patients are falling off of the schedule after restorative care. Maybe your assistants finish seating the crown, and they don't even look to see if the patient has the next hygiene visit scheduled. Your recare system is probably non-existent or inconsistently followed. Maybe your administrative team only uses their hygiene recare follow-up system to fill short-notice cancellations, but isn't consistently working that system on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to reactivate patients. Or your hygiene visits aren't being scheduled for their next visit before they leave. So, if patients are walking out the door from hygiene and we don't pre-schedule them for their next hygiene visit, it is that much harder to get them back in the door. More likely, they're going to fall through the cracks, the potential for them to leave and go elsewhere. So, we definitely want to do everything we can to promote all of those little nuances that help support this metric.” (8:25—9:33) -Miranda

“When we're looking at active patient count, the obvious thing is, ‘Well, I just need more new patients.’ Yes, practices are always healthier when you have new patients coming in as well. So, that's a piece of it, is we need to bring in new patients. But let's look at what you can do literally right now with the patients that are in your schedule without referrals, reviews, marketing, or any of that. What can we do literally right now? Number one is a reactivation or patients going inactive system. So, having your administrative team looking at patients that are about to hit that 18-month mark and haven't been in the practice, or perhaps they are now beyond 18 months, and they're considered inactive. How can we reactivate those patients so that they are back in the practice and a part of that active patient count?” (9:54—10:45) -Miranda

“You can also use the morning huddle to recapture inactive family members. So, having your team, when they're doing their chart prep for the day, take a look in the family file in the practice management software to see if they have family members that aren't scheduled and bringing that up at huddle so that everyone on the team remembers to ask them about scheduling their family members. Then, like we mentioned before, reappointing the patients before they walk out the door for their next visit. And when you're evaluating these metrics, take your business model into consideration. Think about that annual patient value that's taking it to the next level and remind yourself of where you are, and know that the higher that APV is, the less pressure you have to have a higher number of active patients. Those are a few key ways with the patients you have currently, right now, without even worrying about bringing new patients in to try to plug the leaky bucket, not let people fall out and become inactive, bringing them back into the fold, and then making sure that your patients that are currently active are tethered in the future by pre-appointing them for their next visit.” (10:45—11:52) -Miranda

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

1:17 Active patients and active hygiene patients, explained.

3:11 What active patient count tells you.

6:02 Do more with the patients you already have.

9:34 Ways to impact hygiene re-appointment percentage.

12:24 How ACT can help your practice.

13:33 Last thoughts.

Miranda Beeson, MS, BSDH Bio:

Miranda Beeson has over 25 years of clinical dental hygiene, front office, practice administration, and speaking experience. She is enthusiastic about communication and loves helping others find the power that words can bring to their patient interactions and practice dynamics. As a Lead Practice Coach, she is driven to create opportunities to find value in experiences and cultivate new approaches.

Miranda graduated from Old Dominion University, and enjoys spending time with her husband, Chuck, and her children, Trent, Mallory, and Cassidy. Family time is the best time, and is often spent on a golf course, a volleyball court, or spending the day boating at the beach.
ACT Dental Team

ACT Dental Team

    Subscribe to our newsletter