How do I bring overdue patients back?

Dr. Wano · Recorded October 15, 2026. This transcript follows the edited video captions.

Yeah, I think the fastest growth lever is, again, really focusing first on your internal patients. The fastest and the cheapest is the patient list you already have. People who are overdue—treatment that has been diagnosed, treatment planned, but not actually scheduled.

And so focusing in on booking that next visit when the patient is in the chair with you and has said yes. If you tell them, say goodbye, walk into the front desk and just say, “Call us when you’re scheduled,” that’s a handoff. A lot of that is going to be not scheduled, and it will require extra time on your team’s time to then follow down and track them.

And so, again, going back to measuring this in numbers, really need to track this, running a weekly list of overdue hygiene appointments, diagnosed with no appointment treatments—tracking these numbers week to week, and then assigning those owners. I would say automation is a good reminder to make sure that it’s actually showing up for those appointments. Sending those automated texts, those emails.

Those will drive up your no-show—sorry— cut down your no-show rates, right? But then also having a backup plan to that as well, and having a person call the first time. Again, the automation sets up the return on investment for those ones who, if you don’t have a process like that, that will bring more people in.

But then it also frees up time. So you’re not calling for every reminder, for every appointment. It frees up the time for the team to focus on those higher-touch areas that are going to bring those patients in, or scheduling patients.

And so the patients you already have are the easiest ones to point back. You’ve already worked with them; they already trust you. As opposed to paying for marketing for new patients, where you have to start building that trust from the beginning.

So, yeah, really focusing on those patients that you already have.