Tips on How to Reactive Inactive Dental Patients

Reactivating your inactive dental patients can be a task that often gets pushed to the back burner. This is because the day-to-day issues of your dental office tend to seem more pressing to your team. However, here at CTC Associates, we actually recommend that you set aside between two and four hours each week to work on reactivating patients you haven’t seen in a while.

You’ll find that this time investment pays off once you begin to see your inactive patients return for recommended treatment or for overdue dental cleanings and checkups. Keep in mind that around two-thirds of all restorative dental work originates in hygiene and get that part of your team on board as well!

Patient Reactivation Tips

Below are a few things to keep in mind when you’re putting together a reactivation plan in your dental practice:

• Unless otherwise specified by your patients, we recommend contacting them in the late afternoons or early evenings. This is the time when they’re most likely to be home and not too busy. Don’t bombard patients with phone calls, instead make sure to stagger the calls with reminder postcards.
• When sending out reminder postcards, it’s a good idea to offer some kind of patient reactivation special. Additionally, keep note of and send cards out for patients’ birthdays or anniversaries. This boosts loyalty to your office and helps to keep you in the back of your patients’ minds.
• Monitor your attempts to reactive inactive patients with numbers and statistics. This will allow you to determine which of your strategies are working and which are not. Once you have this information, you can fine-tune your reactivation attempts and become more successful at it.
• Lastly, we recommend avoiding reaching out to patients who have a history of not showing up for appointments. These chronic no-shows can end up costing your dental practice more money in the future.

Patient reactivation is an important part of making sure that your dental office runs smoothly and more successfully. If you need help with your reactivation attempts or putting together a reactivation plan, please contact CTC Associates today. Buy a dental practice, find dental practice for sale, and dental practice sales are all apart of our specialty.