Are your new patients one-and-done, or do they stay with you long term? In this episode, Kirk Behrendt brings back Miranda Beeson, ACT’s director of education, to break down new patient re-appointed to hygiene percentage, how it affects your practice, and ways to improve your numbers. To learn how to create long-term patient relationships by re-appointing to hygiene, listen to Episode 958 of The Best Practices Show!
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Main Takeaways:
Quotes:
“New patients re-appointed to hygiene percentage . . . is measuring how many of your new patients that come into the practice for the first time are scheduled for a follow-up hygiene visit after that initial appointment. In other words, are your new patients getting into that ongoing program of care system? Are they being tethered to the practice once they come in and see you, or are they just coming in once and then potentially disappearing? It's a really important metric so that we can know how well are we doing with that new patient experience and capturing these new patients so that they stay with us for a really long time.” (2:31—3:08) -Miranda
“Practices do this a lot of different ways. Sometimes, new patients are coming in through the hygiene chair. Sometimes, new patients are coming in through the doctor's chair. If you are a specialty practice — I was just speaking with a group of prosthodontists and periodontists on Friday. Their new patient process is a little different than a general practice. So, regardless of how they come into your practice, you do run the risk of that patient not scheduling for their next visit — and a lot of that is determined by things that you just said in terms of what's happening at that new patient visit that's going to either help them see the value in coming back to see you again, or perhaps scare them away. So, yes, what you mentioned does happen quite often. If they're coming in and we're really excited because we see all of these needs, but our new patient process isn't built in a way to get to know the patient, understand what their expectations are, and where they want to go with treatment, we very well could drive them off. Then, like you said, we're spending all this manpower trying to hunt them down when, ultimately, the easiest thing to do is to evaluate our new patient process and have it end with ensuring that we're securing a hygiene visit, if nothing else.” (3:55—5:06) -Miranda
“Ultimately, you need that new patient process visit to end — regardless of where it starts and in whose chair they're sitting in — with having a hygiene visit scheduled.” (5:16—5:25) -Miranda
“[New patient re-appointed to hygiene percentage] is a big deal. Like I said, it shows whether you're creating this long-term patient relationship or these short-term encounters. Are we seeing people for emergencies, or limited exams, or maybe comprehensive exams, and then running them off and they never come back? A really high hygiene re-appointment percentage rate for new patients means that they value your care. You've done a really great job during that new patient appointment to start to build trust with your patient and your team, and that they're committing to oral health. They're committing to you being their new dental home or that new provider. A low percentage is going to tell us that we're investing a lot into attracting new patients, but we're not necessarily spending the time or investment into how are we building that loyalty, how are we building that trust and continuity of care, and the value of that at that new patient appointment. When we don't do that for our practice, the impact means higher costs to us because that means we're going to have to market that much more. If we're getting 20 new patients but only 10 of them are staying with the practice, it's a lot more dollars and manpower and effort we're going to have to put into bringing even more patients into the practice in the future. It’s less predictable revenue in the future and fewer opportunities for that comprehensive treatment over time.” (5:32—6:54) -Miranda
“Perhaps someone does have what we know is a need for some comprehensive treatment, and perhaps they're aware, but they're just not quite ready yet. If our only option is for them to schedule their next visit to start treatment, or to have records and start moving down that line of treatment, but they're not ready for that, we're going to sway them away. What if we, instead, have them back for hygiene? ‘Great! You need to think about it? No problem. Let's at least make sure we're monitoring for and managing your oral health through a hygiene program of care.’ It might be two or three visits through hygiene before we're able to layer in enough trust and enough value and understanding of the needs that the patient is now also on board and ready to move forward.” (6:57—7:41) -Miranda
“It's going to be dependent on the style of practice that you have, but 80% [re-appointment] or more is great. If you're in an area where you're, say, a general dentist and you aren't in a vacation area or a snowbird area — I have a practice that works with VA patients, and maybe they're just doing a VA exam, and that patient is not coming back. Things like that can skew your percentage. But if you're a general practice in an area where the majority of your patients are looking to find a true new dental home, then I think it could be even higher than that. Ninety percent or higher means you're crushing it. If you're under 75%, it's going to tell me that there's some gap in your new patient process where we're not building value. There's something happening where if half of those patients or 60% of those patients that come in aren't scheduling their next hygiene visit with you — it could be as simple as we're not asking them to schedule hygiene. It could be a bigger picture, which is, we've done something that we may not even know exists within our new patient process to lure people away.” (8:25—9:33) -Miranda
“One of the things that we do here quite often is things like, we see a new patient, we see a lot of emergencies, and so we're referring them to endo. Or maybe they are scheduled for their next visit, but it is the root canal here in our office. So, what you and I both agree on is, so then schedule two appointments. You're going to schedule that restorative appointment and hygiene. If you have somebody who comes to you and their biggest concern as a new patient is that a tooth needs to come out, and you're sending them to the oral surgeon, go ahead and make a hygiene visit as well in your practice six to eight weeks out where you know they've been able to have that taken care of, they've healed enough that we can now follow up and see how they're doing, and now they're out of pain, out of discomfort, out of that emergent situation, and we can look at the big picture together to make sure we can prevent emergencies like that from happening.” (9:33—10:26) -Miranda
“One thing that's simple is to sit down with your team and really look at, what is our new patient process? If you look at that question and say, ‘I don't think we have a new patient process,’ well, there's step one. Stop and break down the components of your new patient process, discuss it, and document it as a team. What is the patient going to experience? What experience are we creating that we want to be able to replicate over, and over, and over again when a new patient comes in to see us? Let's get it on paper and let's make sure that we have the right questions that we're asking these new patients. And honestly, walk through it with your team. Walk through the front door. You've said before, as soon as someone walks through the front door, they're evaluating that decision-making. So, part of your new patient process is, what are things that we can do in the practice to improve the feel, the look, or the smell of what people are experiencing when they're here?” (10:40—11:33) -Miranda
“Another key element is that you have to make it easy to schedule before patients leave and make it an expectation. I don't like using absolutes like “always” and “never”, but I'm going to lean in to never let the patient walk out without a hygiene appointment. And there's an asterisk there . . . I live in a tourist town. Maybe someone fell on the boardwalk skateboarding when they don't normally skateboard, and broke a front tooth, and we just helped him fix it. Fine. They're obviously not going to re-appoint for hygiene. But for the most part, we want to have a place where they really never leave without us talking about, discussing, and hopefully scheduling that hygiene appointment — even if it means they're having a hygiene appointment and a referral, or and a restorative visit.” (11:57—12:46) -Miranda
“The bottom line is, if you don't track it, you don't know what your re-appointment percentage is. The great thing is with analytic platforms like Dental Intelligence, Jarvis, things of that nature, you can easily find this information. For teams that I work with, it's literally, click on the number of new patients you had this month, there's a list that pulls up, and they either have a hygiene appointment, or they don't. Then, your team can easily follow up with texts, emails, or phone calls and close the loop inviting those new patients back into the schedule so that they can stay tethered to your practice and have that hygiene care.” (12:46—13:22) -Miranda
Snippets:
0:00 Introduction.
2:14 New patients re-appointed to hygiene percentage, explained.
5:28 How this metric impacts the practice.
8:13 High and low re-appointment percentages.
10:26 What you can do to impact this metric.
14:50 ACT’s BPA.
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.