You want more new patients. But you don't need all of them! You need the right ones coming — and staying — in your practice. To teach you how, Kirk Behrendt brings back Miranda Beeson, ACT’s director of education and amazing coach, with three metrics to help you track the true number of new patients you have and need. New patients are your bread and butter. Get them to return and stay long term! To learn how to attract new patients and reappoint the great ones you already have, listen to Episode 727 of The Best Practices Show!
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Main Takeaways:
Quotes:
“New patients are the bread and butter. Ultimately, they're what keeps our practice rolling. So, if we don't have new patients coming in in a steady influx, then we're not going to be successful in the end. A really key piece of that is making sure that we're finding the right new patients for our practice. And really, we measure our success around new patients. We're attracting new patients, always. So, what are we doing to make sure that we're making ourselves a place that someone would want to be as a patient? And then, what are we doing as a team to make sure that when that patient walks through the door, it confirms that this is exactly where they're supposed to be? ‘You're in the right place, and this is why.’ You have to be really intentional about that.” (4:28—5:07)
“We talk a lot about how expensive it is to acquire new patients. You want to make sure that you're doing things right. And the only way to know if you're doing it right is to be able to measure the data around that new patient experience, and then reflect on that data before you make decisions about changing anything in your path.” (5:13—5:29)
“I think that's what most people's plans are, honestly, is like, ‘We should get as many new patients as possible.’ But if you haven't started exactly where you just said you need to start, which is the team aligning around, what type of patients do we want in our practice? What type of dentistry do we want to do? How do we want to help people? What's going to happen once they show up? Which path do we want them to go down? What happens at each of those types of new patient appointments? How do we set ourselves apart? How do we wow people? You have to talk about all of those things before you start looking at, ‘Let's get as many patients in the door as possible,’ because what you might realize is, ‘I need 40 really awesome patients that are just right for what we want to do here. I don't need 400 that maybe never even come back.’” (6:22—7:07)
“Your new patient count is defined as patients completing a first visit within your practice. So, that number is very important to monitor. But . . . it's not the most important number to monitor . . . We have to start somewhere, and one of the easiest metrics to manage is how many new patients have completed a first visit via an ADA code within a certain time period, say per month, in our practice. In Dental Intel, it's based on the first ADA code visit being posted. Some softwares are a little bit different, so note that if you have a different practice management software — you're not working with Dental Intel — you need to understand your software and know how they track that number as a first visit. Some of them track it as you input someone as a new patient, regardless of whether or not they've completed a service. So, you would have to be able to know where that metric stems from. But ultimately, it's pretty simple. It's, how many new patients are you seeing within a given time period?” (11:14—12:11)
“There's no real benchmark for new patient count because every practice is so different. Some practices may only need 20 new patients a month. Some might need five new patients a month. Some need 500. It depends on the size of your practice. It depends on your hygiene reappointment rate. It depends on your pre-appointment rate. Are you trying to grow and support an associate, or are you trying to slow down because you want to start cutting back? So, there's no real benchmark, but you have to be strategic about it. It's not just as many as possible.” (12:17—12:46)
“What's your diagnostic rate? If you “need” new patients . . . to keep your schedule full, I would question, what's your diagnostic percentage of your existing patient base? And are we serving them? We put a lot of effort as practitioners into our new patient exams, and into serving our new patients, and identifying and diagnosing treatment. But are we serving our existing patients with that same fine eye? Are we taking our time, or are we just catching up when we're popping in and doing our exams with our existing patients? So, the less you're diagnosing and managing the oral health of your existing patients, the more new patients you're going to need or feel like you need because you don't have anything in your schedule.” (14:04—14:47)
“I really like the idea of a meet-and-greet visit. I encourage offices that I work with quite often to consider that as an option because not everybody is ready right now. A lot of times, people are scared, anxious, nervous, fearful, or there's just a lack of understanding. Maybe it's been a while since they've been in, or maybe we are an out-of-network or fee-for-service provider and they don't know how that works, so they're not ready to say yes to that comprehensive exam just yet. Or if we don't have the time just yet in our schedule, could we not see someone for a 20-minute, no charge, meet-and-greet, have someone on the administrative team available to show that person around, show them the office, say hi to people in the hallways, maybe go through and sit down and have a little consult, ask a few questions? They're going to remember that experience in a non-threatening way. It's, hey, guess what? If they don't show up, it didn't cost you anything. It wasn't a two-hour block in your schedule and $495 you were expecting to get that day. So, I think it's a nice option to have as a new patient pathway of a meet-and-greet.” (17:58—19:04)
“Another bonus tip around new patient count and getting new patients in within that reasonable amount of time — seven days, two weeks — would be block scheduling and having blocks held and reserved in the schedule for new patients. If you have three different pathways in which new patients join the practice, then we need blocks for all three pathways. And this is going to be based on the goals that you set for your practice in terms of how many new patients you need per month. Break that down per week, and then make sure that you have an appropriate amount of blocks in your schedule so that if someone calls today, they can be seen within the next two weeks for that initial visit.” (20:39—21:15)
“[The second metric to measure is] new patient net growth. I mentioned in the beginning that the new patient count, to me, is not the most important one. This one is, to me, much more important. Dental Intel defines this as the number of new patients minus the patients that are lost. So, what is a lost patient? Patients that are going inactive. What we know is, in the industry, we consider 18 months inactive. If a patient hasn't been in the practice within the last 18 months for a visit, they're technically inactive. Now, sometimes patients are considered lost in this equation if they are inactivated physically — you archive them, you mark them deceased or inactive. But also, if they haven't completed an appointment within the last 18 months, they would count in your lost category.” (22:23—23:06)
“When you're looking at net growth, there are a couple of things you have to consider. There's really an equation that goes into it because we're also recapturing people from that inactivated list or that lost list. There are plenty of patients in our practice that haven't been in in the last 18 months. Maybe they moved, and now they've moved back. Or since COVID . . . a lot of people were delayed in returning into the dental office. We actually consider those recaptured patients in our new patient count. So, when we look at that equation, we're looking at, what's the new patient count? Let's add in however many patients we recaptured within our existing patient count. But now, we have to subtract any patients that went out the back door that we lost either due to being marked inactive, marked archived, marked deceased, or actually just haven't been in the office within the last 18 months. That's going to tell us our actual net new patient growth.” (23:07—24:04)
“There's not one number that tells you if your practice is healthy or not . . . We talk about production more often than not. But that doesn't tell the whole story because we know there are write-offs, and then what do we collect of that. We might talk about the new patient count, but what's our actual growth? And then, how many of those patients are coming back? And then, how much dentistry are we actually producing out of that? So, you really have to look at all of those data points to really understand that full picture of health.” (25:42—26:08)
“Some practices will say, ‘I have 4,000 active patients.’ But if you actually go in and look at those dates, they're marked as active because we haven't marked them inactive. But how many of them have actually physically been in the practice for a visit? And so, we have to touch point with those people. We have to reach out. We have to connect with them. We need follow-up connection systems so that we can make sure that we're trying to build them into that recapture number so that we can start building the growth rate and get it back up into the positive.” (27:13—27:47)
“[The third metric to measure is] the new patient hygiene reappointment rate. And I'm going to highlight the word hygiene. So, when we're looking at how many of those new patients that we saw actually scheduled for a next visit, really importantly, how many scheduled for their next hygiene visit? What we know is hygiene is where the loyalty is built in a practice, because if a new patient comes in and a tooth is bothering them and we fix that tooth, they've scheduled for the next visit. But are they ever coming back? Because now, we solved the problem — or the only perceived problem that they know that they had. And so, if we take our time through that comprehensive exam to really build value also in the long-term plan and we make sure that we have them reappointed for hygiene, that's going to tell us how successful our new patient experience is. And I can have 100 new patients in my count. I could have 50 new patients in my growth. But ultimately, if those patients never return, none of that matters.” (27:55—28:50)
“What we need to also do is schedule that next visit. So, ‘Yes, patient. I hear what you're saying, and I want to help you, and we're going to help you. Do you know what we're going to do? We're going to go one step beyond that. We're going to help you with this problem, but we're going to help you prevent any future problems by going ahead and reserving an appointment with one of our oral health specialists. Our hygienist, Jane, is going to look forward to seeing you. Let's go ahead and reserve that as well. We can do that two weeks after we finish our restorative appointment so you have time to make sure you're comfortable. And great news. I can actually look at it when you come in for that visit and give you some peace of mind that everything is a-okay.’” (32:28—33:03)
“We're putting all this effort and focus and intentionality on this first visit, but we need to do that looking forward into the future as well.” (35:20—35:29)
“A lot of us have worked in practices where you can see the patient has a dollar sign over their head. And you don't want to work for a provider that sees patients in that way. But sometimes, you feel like you have to. You feel trapped by like, ‘I've got to close this one.’ But what comes is that production in the long run, if you're playing the long game. And if you're looking ahead into the future and not just one new comprehensive patient at a time, the lifetime of that patient in your practice, it starts with being forward-focused. And you don't want to pressure them so hard in the beginning that they're like, ‘Now, I'm a little skeptical. That felt a little bit like a sales pitch.’ No — you're building a relationship with that patient. That's the most important thing that you do at the first visit. And part of that is inviting them back.” (35:59—36:46)
“I would generally coach teams to try to be at 75% or above [for hygiene reappointment]. I think that it's unrealistic to think that everybody is coming back. And the thing that you need to think about is taking into consideration that sometimes you're covering for a dentist down the street, and somebody came in, and they were a new patient last month. But really, they're never coming back. You were just doing an emergency visit maybe for Dr. Awesome, who's down the block, while he's on vacation.” (39:39—40:06)
“Sometimes, when people come in for their comprehensive exam, or if you take new patients into the practice as emergencies or same-day type treatment, you might be referring them. You might be referring them to an endodontist, an oral surgeon, or a periodontist. But that doesn't mean we can't schedule them for hygiene. So, it's still important to tether them to the practice, and that's through that hygiene reappointment.” (40:50—41:12)
“The right number of new patients isn't as many as possible . . . You need to look at the practice as a whole. You need to look at your current active patient size. You mentioned earlier that based on full-time provider, 1,200 to 1,500 is an appropriate number. That's generally a healthy practice. So, if you're a single-doctor practice who’s a full-time provider and you already have 1,600 patients, you don't need as many new patients as a start-up who maybe only has 700.” (43:56—44:29)
“How many of your existing active patients — people who have been in the office in the last 18 months — this is a number we didn't talk about, but how many of those patients are pre-appointed for something? So, they're active patients if they've been in the practice within the last 18 months. But I really consider them active if they're also currently pre-appointed for something. So, let me put numbers on that. If you have 1,000 active patients — in the last 18 months, 1,000 patients have been through my door. But only 600 of those patients currently are pre-appointed for something in our office. I have 400 patients that are active, technically. But how active are they if they're currently not tethered in some way? And so, we have to be looking at that number too because, yes, I have 1,000 active patients. I probably need at least 200 to 500 more to really feel like I'm supporting my full-time position. But how many of those don't even have anything scheduled in your office right now?” (44:44—45:50)
“You don't need as many patients as you can get. You need the right number of patients for what you're trying to do, which ultimately goes back to your vision and what are you trying to create for your practice. If you're trying to grow, and you want another location, and you want an associate, and you're going to be hiring another hygienist, you need more patients. But if you're just trying to run your practice to the best of your ability, creating an elevated experience, we can just stay stable. So, let's look at how many patients are going out the back door. How can we plug that leaky bucket, slim that down, and then consistently have a trend of what that looks like? And now, we know how many we're going to need to bring in each week or each month in order to support staying exactly where we are. It just depends on if you're growing or stabilizing.” (46:56—47:34)
Snippets:
0:00 Introduction.
1:49 About Miranda’s Dental Administrator course.
3:55 Why this is an important topic.
5:33 You don't need every single patient you can get.
9:58 Have a “yellow front door” in your practice.
10:57 Metric #1) New patient count.
12:12 How many new patients should you have a month?
12:46 What is your diagnostic rate?
14:50 Get patients in within one to two weeks of the call.
16:21 Do a meet-and-greet with prospective patients.
20:36 Have block scheduling for new patients.
22:17 Metric #2) New patient net growth.
27:50 Metric #3) New patient hygiene reappointment rate.
29:50 Create value with language.
31:48 Schedule their next appointment.
39:26 The ideal new patient hygiene reappointment percentage.
41:53 Send Kirk the most difficult discussions you've had with patients.
43:44 Final thoughts.
Miranda Beeson, MS, BSDH Bio:
Miranda Beeson, MS, BSDH, 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.