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Five Patient Retention Strategies That Work

A Top Priority for Dentists is to Improve Patient Satisfaction to Retain Patients

Every dental practice manager knows that retaining current patients is just as vital to your success as gaining new patients. Through patient retention, your practice can thrive and grow, and one of the best ways to retain your patients is to make them happy. However, this isn’t easy and you need to employ retention strategies to avoid patients slipping through the cracks and seeking their dental care elsewhere.

Let’s look at five effective patient retention strategies that really work to help your dental practice flourish and your income grow.

1. Know Your Patients

Dentists should view their patients as customers who choose where they get their dental care, based on quality of service and convenience. Develop a plan to help you and your team to remember patients and their personal situations. Keep a note in their patient record about what they discussed during their last visit. Remembering each patient will help them feel valued, appreciated, and importantly for your practice, keep them coming back.

2. Manage Your Schedule

More than 40% of dental practices spend over three hours each day managing their schedule. (Ref: Nex Health State of Dental 2022)As dental practices look for areas to improve efficiency, reducing the time spent on managing your schedule is vital. In the new era of remote work, removing time-intensive processes has a simple solution: outsourcing. Remote workers allow your practice managers and receptionists to focus on more critical duties like handling insurance claims, coordinating patient treatment plans, and managing day-to-day office operations. Freedom from your schedule means you and your dentists can spend more time focusing on your patients. It means your team can break free from dental admin to get the tasks you need done, done.

3. Be on Time

Scheduling strategies are key when it comes to making patients feel confident to entrust you with their oral health. If you run behind every day, it won’t take long for patients to notice. The same can be said for how soon you’re able to see patients back in your practice for follow-up care. If your patients are waiting eight or nine weeks for a treatment appointment after their initial consult, they may think that your recommended treatment is not as much of a priority as your staff made it out to be.

4. Communication is Essential

It’s critical to respond to communications promptly because no one likes to wait for an answer. Your patients live increasingly busy lives, so it’s vital that your team call them to remind them of appointments to reduce missed appointments. Also, people are now used to having multiple options for contacting a business. Consider providing chatbots and forms on your website. Offer phone numbers and SMS texting options. Use a patient portal.

5. Customer Service Counts

Everyone on your team has a specific role, be it clinical or admin. However, you all share the role of customer service. From your receptionist to your hygienist, it is everyone’s job to make your patient feels like a VIP. If that is not happening, then basic customer service training can be a worthwhile investment. Inadequate phone systems and not enough staff can make it difficult to contact your office. Poor scheduling results in longer wait times. The smoother your office runs, the better your patients’ experience will be.

Clear Admin people can help you break free from your admin issues to make sure your patient retention strategy is a success.

We’re a Western Australian company, providing quality dental practice staff to Australian dentists.  Our outstanding staff are based offshore but they are an integral part of your team. They offer you peace of mind knowing that the important tasks are being taken care of professionally and with passion. You can spend more time providing the high level of customer service your patients deserve.