Hygiene Patient Reactivation | Dental Practice Solutions

Reactivating Hygiene Patients for Dental Practice Growth

By: Debbie Seidel-Bittke, RDH, BS

July 16, 2024

Every dental practice has patients who leave without scheduling a next appointment or haven’t booked an appointment in over 3 plus months. Despite your busy schedule, patient retention remains crucial for sustained success. With a targeted strategy for reactivating hygiene patients, you will bring patients back to your office, keep them on the schedule, and experience consistent dental practice growth.

There is an easier way to do hygiene patient reactivation than ever before. Hygiene patient reactivation does not need to be boring, time consuming or tedious. There are simple ways to automate this patient activation process. Every member of your team should be cross-trained to participate in this simple process.

Below, we’ll discuss essential steps and provide advice on managing this critical task with a simplified, proven way to keep patients on your schedule.

Active vs. Inactive Patients

Active patients are those who have received dental treatment within the last 18 months and are marked as active in your practice management software. Inactive patients, on the other hand, either haven’t had an appointment in the last 18 months and should be marked as inactive in your practice management software.

Tips and Advice on Dental Reactivation Campaigns

Patient reactivation is the process of bringing back unscheduled patients for treatment. Each successful reactivation not only boosts your practice’s production and profits but it’s an opportunity to build patient loyalty and keep your backdoor closed.

In today’s fast-paced world, it’s imperative that you have this hygiene patient reactivation system automated. The Smile Club is one system created many years ago proven to keep patients on your schedule.

The Importance of a System to Reactivate Overdue Hygiene Patients

It’s important to note that retaining existing patients is far more cost-effective than acquiring new patients. Marketing research shows that it can cost up to five times more to attract a new patient than to retain an existing one.

Initial Reactivation Efforts

Use practice management software to research inactive hygiene patients and patients with unscheduled restorative treatment
Begin by compiling a comprehensive list of patients who haven’t visited in the last 30 days to 24 months.
Dental Practice Solutions clients use a robust reactivation system to easily find unscheduled hygiene patients. Some hygiene patients also have unscheduled restorative treatment.
Triage the order in which you will contact these various patients.

Include details such as patient names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, insurance coverage, preferred contact methods, and the date of their last appointment.

*Register for our Hygiene Patient Reactivation Power hour and watch how we do this! During the power hour (Webinar) we will show you how to turbocharge your patient reactivation system.

5. Utilize Text Messages and Email

Rarely do people answer a phone call when they don’t recognize the phone number calling them. 90% of all text messages are responded to very quickly vs. a phone call or email.

Utilize text (SMS) messaging. Ensure that SMS messages are only sent to patients who have opted in for texting. Be sure that your SMS messaging system is HIPAA compliant and two-way communication is enabled.

6. Personalize Your Messaging

Tailor your communications based on factors like the length of inactivity, insurance coverage, and specific dental needs. Personalized messages with clear calls to action (CTAs) improve engagement rates.

Use no more than two sentences in a text message to patients. Make it a short sweet messaging and be sure it includes your office name and a phone number for a call back. Make it easy for patients to schedule their next hygiene appointment by offering a scheduling link.

7. Enhance Engagement with Interactive Content

Incorporate links to your online scheduling portal, website, and social media in your emails. Visuals like animations, infographics, and QR codes offering incentives can further increase patient response.

Check with your stateBOD legal marketing guidelines when sending SMS because many states have stiff penalties for various types of marketing SMS, they consider unethical.

8. Offer Unscheduled Patients an Incentive for Scheduling

Unfortunately, many patients thinks they have something better to do than sit in a dental chair.

Offer a special incentive, a carrot, and reward patients who keep their scheduled and pre-scheduled dental appointments.

One system that has proven to keep patients returning to their dental appointments and works well as an incentive to get patients back on the schedule is The Smile Club.

Keep Your Practice Thriving

At Dental Practice Solutions, we understand the importance of patient reactivation in maintaining dental practice growth. Alongside patient retention, are important factors such, as case acceptance and enhanced patient care services. Explore how our robust solutions will support your dental practice’s growth—book an opportunity call today!

One area of our expertise includes hygiene patient reactivation. Dental Practice Solutions ensures that your dental practice continues to grow and thrive with the creation of The Smile Club. This is an innovative way to support practice growth while keeping patients on your schedule.

Don’t overlook your dental practice growth potential by creating a system to reactive overdue hygiene patients. Reconnecting with them can significantly impact your dental practice’s success.

Be sure you register for our Hygiene Patient Reactivation Power Hour happening on Tuesday July 23rd at 5 PM Pacific. Twice, each month, we share important systems and steps you can take to boost profitability in your dental practice. Check back each month for our latest topics to grow your dental practice and without working so hard!

Six Tips for Hygiene Patient Reactivation and Unscheduled Treatment

By: Debbie Seidel-Bittke, RDH, BS

June 18, 2024

Reactivating hygiene patients and following up on unscheduled treatments can be challenging, but with the right strategies, you can effectively bring patients back into your practice.

Here are Six Tips for Hygiene Patient Reactivation and Unscheduled Treatment to help you improve your patient outreach and increase patient engagement.

Let’s explore these actionable steps to ensure your patient engagement and follow-ups are successful.

1. Cultivate a Positive Mindset

Summer is upon us. That means patients are on vacation, holidays are near and patients may think they are too busy to schedule a dental appointment.

But wait! Let’s check our mindset and get over any negative thoughts such as, “no one wants to come in” or that “it’s the 4th of July and no one wants to come in!”

Approaching calls with these negative assumptions makes it harder to achieve your goal of getting patients back into the office. Take a deep breath. Create positive thoughts as you make phone calls to patients. Your mindset is crucial for successful patient reactivation and all patient engagement.

2. Evaluate Your Outreach Efforts

Keep track of how many calls, emails, texts, and letters your employees are sending to existing patients. Review the volume and effectiveness of these outreach efforts and your patient engagement system. If outreach is high but responses are low, consider the message being conveyed and the manner in which the team members are attempting to engage with patients. A team member who sounds bored or disinterested will not engage patients effectively. Patient engagement can be a boring task. Automate as much of this as possible.

We suggest automating short and sweet text messages. We teach clients to use a specific rhythm to send message and how often to send these messages.

3. Personalize Your Message

Using a script can be helpful, but it’s important that it doesn’t sound robotic. Patients can tell when someone is reading from a script versus speaking genuinely. Train your team to use scripts as guidelines, allowing them to personalize their messages and sound more natural.

Utilize a specific template for various types of text messages when reactivating overdue hygiene patients.

Example: Text 1 is sent to patients today.

Text 2 is sent in 5 days when there is no response to text message 1.

After a 3rd text without a response we do suggest a phone call be made.

Most patients are not as likely to quickly respond to your phone message so make it short and sweet. Basically let patients know, “It’s time! Please give us a call about your dental appointment.”

Be prepared to have patients respond, “I don’t have an appointment.” With your patient on the phone you need to click on their electronic chart, look at their necessary unscheduled treatment for restorative and/or hygiene care. You must speak with words that create urgency to schedule.

Example: “Doctor asked me to call. She is concerned this tooth is going to cause you pain.”

Talk about putting a halt to “inflammation”, “lose a tooth”, “more cost for a tooth that has a hole”, etc. Use words that paint a picture and create urgency.

4. Train and Practice

Team training is imperative if you wish to continue growth and your current level of success. Practice makes perfect and it’s crucial for the team members who are making calls practice to make patient calls effective. Ensure your employees feel confident sending text messages and emails each week, month, etc, by providing regular training and role-playing different scenarios.

Pair less experienced team members with seasoned team members to practice handling various phone situations, starting with simple scenarios and progressing to more complex ones.

Use an expert coach, a trainer to make sure this practice occurs and it can make it more fun to work with an expert who routinely works with teams on these skills. Schedule a half-day workshop or a few hours of ZOOM coaching with an expert who can offer expert guidance.

5. Clarify Your Purpose

Beyond getting patients back on the schedule, the purpose of keeping your patients on the schedule is to ensure optimal oral health leading to a longer-healthier life. Demonstrate genuine care for the patient’s well-being and you will significantly impact the outcome of your patient engagement and the amount of scheduled patient appointments which will decrease the time spent on reactivation of unscheduled patients.

Understand what your patient values and always make everything you say and do benefit the patient.

6. Vary Call Times and Use Multiple Communication Channels

If you’re having trouble reaching a patient by phone, try calling at different times of the day. You never know when a patient might be available.

We recommend that you 1st send a text message and if there is no response after a 2nd text message that week, make a phone call to your patient. Patients in todays world respond to a text message much faster than a voice message.

If you must leave a voice message make it short and sweet with a phone number to call back your office about their dental appointment. Do not leave long-winded voicemail messages.

Always follow up at least 48 hours when a patient leaves without scheduling for restorative care or a next hygiene appointment. When patients do not respond to your text messages or phone calls use a patient engagement system to email your patients. Most patient engagement systems will have specific templates with informative videos about your patient’s specific care needed.

Always personalize your text messages and emails. These emails and text messages can be automated when you use robust dental office patient engagement solutions.

Need a patient engagement solution?

We are happy offer a few great suggestions to get this system automated and working effectively.

Let us know!

Summary

These tips should help improve your patient reactivation and even reduce the need to chase patients to get them back on your schedule.

For further assistance, consider registering for one of our Summer 2024 Dentist Power Hours when we are discussing patient reactivation and retention.

Are you wondering if you have untapped potential? Tired of working so hard?

Consider booking a no-cost opportunity ZOOM call here.

Or contact us at: 623-252-1941.