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955: Metric Mondays: Unscheduled Active Patients – Miranda Beeson

You might have 1,500 active patients. But how many don't have their next appointments scheduled? In this episode, Kirk Behrendt brings back Miranda Beeson, ACT’s director of education, to break down unscheduled active patients, how it impacts your practice, and ways to improve your numbers so your days get better at work. To learn how to keep patients tethered to your practice, listen to Episode 955 of The Best Practices Show!

 

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Episode Resources:

Main Takeaways:

  • Having too many unscheduled patients will lead to schedule gaps and lost revenue.
  • Unscheduled patients also means missed opportunities for preventative care.
  • About 40% of patients who don't schedule future appointments don't return.
  • Align your team on the expectation to always preschedule your patients.
  • Also align your team on the value-building language that's used.
  • When patients are less likely to return, their health will suffer.
  • Create follow-up systems to proactively recapture patients.

Quotes:

“One of our favorite clients of all time, I asked him, ‘Do you know the number?’ He didn't. He looked it up, and it was like 782. He's like, ‘I have chest pain.’ I want you to think about this. These are people that like you. They've already been to your practice. They've already paid for your services. But somehow, they're floating in the universe. They are active. They've been in your practice in the last 18 months, and they're not tethered to the practice. All you have to do is go from 782, to 682, to 582, to 482, and I promise, all of your hygienists will come to you and go, ‘Stop! Stop! I have nowhere to put these people that already like us. I can't do this!’ Instead, you're out trying to do Facebook ads and come up with a campaign to find all these new people that have never been to your practice.” (4:33—5:21) -Kirk

“We see this all the time where you have openings in your schedule, or capacity is starting to slip, or it seems like our diagnostic percentage, the patients we're able to diagnose, is slowly dying down. When you stop and look at it, is it because you're seeing the same 750 patients and the other 750 aren't even in your schedule anymore? So, a high number of unscheduled active patients can lead to gaps in the schedule, and certainly lost revenue. Then, we always like to tie these metrics to patient care. The other thing it does is missed opportunities for preventative care. When we have patients who are out there floating around in the universe, untethered to our practice, we don't have the potential to see them on a regular basis and catch small things or even prevent things from occurring. We're going to see them when they call us, eventually, and they have an emergency.” (5:28—6:26) -Miranda

“If you're a one-doctor practice, and you have 1,500 active patients, and you have 50% of them, like, you run this report and you say, ‘Oh my gosh, I have 750 of these active patients that don't have a scheduled appointment,’ that tells us that we have a whole lot of manpower ahead of us to try to get these patients back in the practice. Now, in reality, you're never going to have 100% of your active patients scheduled. There are always going to be some patients on your unscheduled active patient list, more than likely. But the lower that number is, the less work and effort we have to put in on the other end of trying to get them back into the practice, or we're scrambling reactively when we start to see things showing up, like the gaps in the schedule or capacity challenges. So, if you have 1, 500 patients and you have just 200 of them that are unscheduled, you still want to work your follow-up systems. But it's not nearly as big of an impact on your practice than if you're at 50% or 60% unscheduled.” (6:29—7:29) -Miranda

“I used to work for a practice, and we were going to be purchasing another practice. Maybe you're at this place in your practice where you're approaching retirement in the next handful of years, and you're feeling really good like, ‘Okay, we're a one-doctor practice. We have 1,800 active patients.’ You're thinking that's going to look really attractive to a buyer. But if a broker digs into your metrics and sees that you have 1,800 active patients but you only have 800 that are scheduled moving forward, that really does decrease the value of your practice because of the amount of work, time, effort, and money that's going to have to be spent to recall those patients back in.” (7:35—8:12) -Miranda

“What we know from some industry data is when a patient leaves without scheduling, over time, approximately 40% of those patients, unless you're really aggressively working some follow-up systems, they never come back . . . If you don't pay attention to the number, and you don't even know this is happening, and you don't have any countermeasures in place, the data shows us, in our industry of dentistry, that about 40% of those patients don't ever return. Or if and when they do, it's with an emergency — and that's going to cause chaos in your schedule. So, if we can keep ahead of this, we're going to have more predictability with future revenue. We're going to have less gaps in our schedule. We'll have less chaos in our schedule when we have these same-day emergencies calling on a regular basis because we're doing a better job of keeping the patient's oral health outcomes front of mind, being preventative, and seeing them consistently on a customized rhythm that supports what they need.” (8:13—9:13) -Miranda

“Align with your team and create an expectation, if it hasn't been there before, to preschedule our patients for their next visit, that every time a patient is walking out of the operatory, whether it's restorative or hygiene, the team member knows to look and ensure that they have a next visit scheduled. If they don't, we're going to make it before they leave our operatory. If, for some reason, we're stuck and maybe it's a whole family that needs to schedule, then in that hand-off to our administrative team member when we're stopping at the front, we're going to say, ‘And we do want to make sure we have Mrs. Jones back for her next visit. I haven't had an opportunity to schedule that just yet.’ Everybody on the team knows that they're looking before that patient leaves because the expectation is they have a next visit scheduled. As long as they have a next visit scheduled, they're never going to show up on this unscheduled active patient list, and they are tethered to our practice. We will have another opportunity to connect, communicate, and serve that patient.” (10:20—11:20) -Miranda

“Aligning, when we’re doing that, we have to first have the expectation that every patient leaves with a next visit scheduled. Then, we also have to align around the language. How do we make sure that our team is using language that really builds value in that next visit so that the patient is going to be more inclined to keep it, show up, and not cancel last minute? So, talking about our next appointment with personalized communication, like, what is it that we're doing, and how is that next visit going to be important to the patient? Maybe it's a hygiene visit, and all we have to do is celebrate and say, ‘Mrs. Jones, we've reserved that next visit for you in April. I'm so excited to see you so we can celebrate how well you're doing again with your home care. This routine, this regimen of care of every four months is working really well, so I'll be seeing you again then.’ And we're confirming that it's with me. There's a reason. It’s not just because you're due, or because I'm supposed to schedule you, and that's our process here. It's because, ‘You're receiving a benefit, patient. Your health is better than it's ever been, so let's make sure we go ahead and reserve the next time too, so that we can keep helping you in this way,’ and using that language to make sure that they know there's something in it for them, and it's going to make them more likely to keep that visit. (11:21—12:39) -Miranda

“There's a reality to the fact that some people can't preschedule. Maybe they live in a different place, or they're having surgery, or who knows. Maybe they think they're moving, and then they end up not moving, or they cancel, and they can't for some reason. You should definitely try to reschedule anyone that cancels in the moment . . . You should have follow-up systems that aren't reactive to openings in the schedule, but instead proactively part of your administrative team's daily and weekly checklists. So, we're calling those hygiene recare lists. We're calling our unscheduled treatment lists. Maybe you're running this unscheduled active patient list and making sure we've made points of contact with these people. If we're not reaching out and customizing and personalizing our outreach, they will escape into the abyss, at least 40% of them, never to be seen again.” (12:40—13:30) -Miranda

“People say, ‘Would you like to make your next appointment? Or maybe not.’ It’s very weak. ‘No, I don't.’ Then, in that, you can hear, “next appointment”. Number one, don't ask somebody if they want to make their next appointment. Tell them we're going to.” (13:45—14:01) -Kirk

“Verbal skills matter, and it starts with your belief at the top about how important these are. Get your team involved and engaged. When they get good at understanding the “why”, and adding the verbal skills, and then you're looking at the data, everything gets better.” (14:49—15:05) -Kirk

“All patients matter, so make sure you're nurturing every single one of them.” (15:11—15:15) -Miranda

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

2:51 Unscheduled active patients, explained.

4:19 How unscheduled active patients impacts your practice.

10:01 Ways to positively impact this metric.

15:06 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.

 
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