Your Inactive Patient Files Might Be a Gold Mine
Your Inactive Patient Files Might Be a Gold Mine
(Note: Although this guideline is written with dental examples, it certainly applies to other professions as well. For example, getting patients back in for checkups, re-exams, follow-up visits, incomplete physical therapy, health programs and so on.)
How many of your past patients have you not seen in a while? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
If most of the patients you have ever seen are still active, you are doing great!
If not, perhaps you have a gold mine.
Take 20 charts of inactive patients and add up the dollar amount of diagnosed, undone dentistry. Divide this by 20 for the average amount per chart. Now multiply this by the number of inactive patients in your files. For example, if you have 1000 inactive patients with an average of $1500 of diagnosed-undone treatment, the potential is $150,000. If you have 5000 inactive charts with an average of $2000 in diagnosed-undone treatment, you have a $1,000,000 gold mine!
Who Should Reactivate Patients?
All staff should know how to reactivate inactive patients. It’s a vital, on-going process, and can be performed by the Promotion Manager, Office Manager or any staff member. Anyone on staff who has a few minutes can make reactivation calls. It’s also a great way for hygienists to fill their open slots.
Reactivating patients pays off! For example, a patient who could not afford any dental care a few years ago, gets a friendly reactivation call and comes in ready to pay for $5,000 to $40,000 of treatment.
Take charge of the patient reactivation duties or assign a responsible manager to take charge.
He or she can organize the project, assign inactive patients, keep track of the records and get others to help.
When someone speaks to an inactive patient, he or she should add the details to the patient's chart.
Set weekly quotas and track the results at the end of each week.
Two Approaches for Reactivating Patients
1. You just call the patients and invite them back into the office. For example, the staff and doctor review 25 files to ensure the doctor wants them called. The staff member then contacts the patient and says,
“Dr. Jones was reviewing your file this morning and told me he was concerned about you. He asked me to give you a call and schedule an appointment for a free exam.”
Or if the doctor does not need to review the charts, you can say, “We were reviewing your file this morning and we're concerned about you. We'd like you to come in for a free exam.”
You then handle whatever comes up, remind the patient about the importance of dental care and focus on getting the appointment.
2. Another approach is to mail or email a letter to 25 inactive patients each week. A sample letter is at the end of this article. You then call all 25 the following week.
"I'm calling to see if you received the letter from Dr. Jones that we sent you last week?”
"Dr. Jones wants to make sure we catch any problems with your teeth before they become painful and expensive to fix. He asked me to call you and schedule an exam."
Or "We want to make sure we catch any problems with your teeth before they become painful and expensive to fix. We'd like you to come in for an exam."
Persistence
With either approach, persist until you reach the patient. Call three times with a day or two between calls. If no response, try again in a few months.
In no case do you terminate a patient's relationship with the practice because the patient prefers to stay inactive. Just try again in a few months.
If the patient does not easily schedule, ask questions to learn more details. Do everything you can do to help the patient resolve the obstacles and schedule the appointment.
A reasonable target is to reactivate 50% of the patients who have been out of the practice between 18 months and three years, 15% to 25% of the patients who have been out of the practice
between three and five years, and 10-20% for the patients beyond five years.
Start reactivating the inactive patients whose last names start with the letter “A” and go down the alphabet.
Seven Reasons Why Patients Are Inactive
1. They die.
2. They move.
3. They lose their jobs or their insurance coverage.
4. They are afraid.
5. They are upset with you or your staff.
6. They do not understand the need.
7. They switch to another practice.
How to Handle Each Reason
1. If they died, it’s valuable information for your records.
2. If they moved, they still might want to come back. Patients, who love their dentists, often travel great distances for their dental care. You can usually find them by searching for them with Google.
3. If they lost their jobs or coverage, they can still come in for a free exam and then look for a solution.
4. If they are afraid, they will probably not tell you. You have to figure it out based on their flimsy excuses, fast breathing, avoiding your calls and other signs.
You can carefully ask about their last visit to coax out the details and listen to their concerns. Was it comfortable or stressful? Painful in any way?
Once these patients open up and communicate to you, you can offer solutions. For example, “IfI put a note in your chart, I know they’ll be much more careful to not hurt you in any way.”
Depending on the patient, you might jokingly ask, “Are you like most people and just hate going to the dentist?” you might get a big reaction and a lot of relief.
5. If they are upset, resolving the upset is a high priority. Of course, it’s important to handle them because it’s the professional thing to do, but these patients also need to be handled before they post negative reviews! Google and other review websites are filled with bad reviews regarding visits patients had many years back.You need to ask questions, carefully listen and gather the details. You can then find a solution or arrange for the doctor to call the patient. See “How to Handle Patient Complaints” attached to this guideline.
6. If they do not understand the need, they may say, “I don’t have any pain so I don’t need an appointment.” You need to educate these patients about dental problems not causing pain until they are major problems. An exam will make sure nothing bad happens.
For example, “If you have a gum disease, you can’t see it or feel it. Your teeth just get loose and need to be pulled out.” “If you wait for a cavity to hurt, it’s usually too late for a simple filling to fix it.”
Explain the only way to avoid expensive, painful dental treatment is to get preventive care. “I’m glad you don’t have any problems, but Dr. Jones would like you to come in for a free
checkup, just to make sure, okay?”
7. If they switched to another practice, do not give up on them!
Try to find out what happened. Look for problems, fears, complaints and upsets. Find solutions.
If nothing else, ensure they have a good opinion of the practice.
How to Handle Patient Complaints
You can handle nearly all patient complaints with these six steps.
1. Thank the patient for the complaint
If patients cannot complain to you, they complain to others. They post negative reviews about your practice. They switch to another practice without telling you why. So you need to thank them for communicating. “Thanks for telling me about this billing problem!” “I’m glad you told me about the doctor not giving you enough time.”
2. Apologize
Even if the complaint is not true, or you had nothing to do with the cause of the complaint, apologize. “I'm sorry this happened,” calms nearly all patients. “I’m truly sorry we accidentally billed you for that service.” “I want to apologize for Dr. Smith. He had an emergency yesterday and did not mean to make you wait.”
Finger pointing, denial or shifting the guilt to someone else, or blaming the patient, will not resolve the complaint and makes matters worse. Be an adult, apologize and move on.
3. Promise to help
“I'll make sure the billing department corrects the mistake.” “I'll discuss this with the doctor and call you back as soon as possible.”
4. Gather the facts
Find out WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHO so you can solve the problem.
Never treat patients like children, or say, “You need to tell me the problem, otherwise I can't help you.” Instead, treat the patient with importance and write down the facts. “When did you receive the bill?”
5. Find a solution
“What could we do to make you happy?” “What would resolve this problem for you?”
In some cases, simply venting their irritation to you is all the patient requires.
If the patient does not offer a solution, or if his or her solution is out of line, propose a solution.
“What if I called the insurance company for you?” “Would you consider the problem solved if I . . . ?”
“What if doctor Jones talked to you about this?”
6. Follow through
Ensure the solution has solved the complaint. For example, call the patient and ask. “Did the billing company fix the mistake?” “Are you ready to schedule an appointment with Dr. Smith?”
Sample Reactivation Letter/Email
Dear Jill,
I want to thank you for selecting me as your dentist. I am, however, concerned as I have not seen you in some time.
I recently checked your chart and noticed we had found some problems, but we never handled them.
If another dentist has helped you, I would be happy to know this.
If you have not gone to another dentist, I’d like you to come in for an exam (no charge) so we can check your teeth and discuss some options for you.
I just want to make sure you do not end up with a serious, painful and expensive dental problem.
Please call Jill at (123) 456-7890 to find a time that is convenient for you.
Thank you,
Bob Jones, D.D.S.