How dental clinics can bring back patients for 6-month check-ups

Why is recall the cheapest growth a dental clinic has?

A patient who has already sat in your chair needs no persuading about who you are. There is no ad spend, no comparison of three clinics, no anxiety about whether you are any good. There is only the question of whether they remember.

Most clinics have hundreds or thousands of these patients sitting in their records, and contact almost none of them.

When should a recall message go out?

Based on the individual patient's last visit, not on a monthly blast to everyone. A message that says "it has been six months since your cleaning" is a reminder. A message that says "book a cleaning this month" sent to your whole list is an advertisement, and patients can tell the difference instantly.

For most routine check-ups, six months after the last visit is the natural trigger. Treatment-specific follow-ups have their own intervals — a crown review, an aligner check, a post-extraction follow-up.

What should the message say?

Short, by name, from the clinic rather than from a brand, and with one clear next step.

• Name the patient and the clinic
• Say when they last came and what for
• Say what is due now, in plain words
• Offer two or three specific times rather than asking them to call

How do you avoid annoying people?

Honour opt-outs instantly and permanently. If someone replies STOP, that is the end of it, including for future recall cycles.

Do not chase. One recall message and, at most, one gentle follow-up a week or two later. A third message turns a trusted clinic into a nuisance, and the cost of that is much higher than one lost cleaning.

And do not recall patients who have moved to another clinic or whose treatment finished badly. Those messages land worse than no message.

What gets in the way of doing this well?

Almost always the records. Recall needs a reliable last-visit date and treatment type per patient. Clinics that keep this in a mix of paper, a practice management system and someone's memory cannot run recall properly until that is tidied.

This is usually the real work. The messaging is the easy part; knowing accurately who is due and when is where the effort goes.