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How Dentists Can Win Back Lost Patients

How Dentists Can Win Back Lost Patients
by Kyle Johnson

No dentist likes to lose patients, particularly when those patients take their business to competing nearby practices. Patient departures cannot be entirely prevented, however, there are steps dentists can take to steer their former patients back to their practice and prevent other patients from leaving in the first place.

Ask departing patients for feedback

If a patient calls your practice to ask for medical records or otherwise inform you of his or her departure, instruct your staff to ask whether there’s anything the practice can do to encourage the patient to stay.

If the patient is not open to staying, ask specifically why he or she is leaving. Perhaps the person found the front office staff to be rude, or he or she is dissatisfied with the long wait on hold when scheduling appointments. Feedback like this can help you improve your dental practice.

In some cases, patients will not let you know they’re leaving, they will simply stop booking appointments and stop responding to outreach efforts. The most effective way to receive feedback from these patients is to send them a survey to ask about their departure.

Sending the survey via email is the most effective way to reach former patients. Online tools such as Google Forms and SurveyMonkey make it easy to create professional-looking surveys that former patients can complete in minutes. If you do not have patient email addresses in your database, you can send surveys through the mail.

To encourage more participation, keep your surveys short and to-the-point. First, ask patients to select their reasons for leaving from a list of possibilities. These might include:

• I have moved out of the area or have had other life changes that prevent me from returning to this practice.
•  My insurance has changed and this practice does not accept my new provider.
•  I experienced logistical challenges, such as difficulty parking, that made me not want to return to this practice.
•  I had difficulty reaching the practice by phone to schedule an appointment.
•  The service I received from the front office staff was not up to my standards.
•  The treatment I received from the health-care provider was not up to my standards.
•  Other (please explain).