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How much is your dormant patient list worth?
Three numbers is all it takes. Most practices are sitting on £40,000–£200,000 in revenue that's already in their PMS — they just haven't asked for it back yet.
Dormant patient revenue, answered
What counts as a dormant patient?
Anyone on your list who has not attended in twelve months or more. They are not former patients in any formal sense — they are still in your practice management system, they still think of you as their dentist, and most of them stopped coming for a reason that had nothing to do with the care they received.
Where does the 40% recovery rate come from?
It is the benchmark for patients lapsed twelve months or more, drawn from Harvard Business School and Dental Economics data. It is a benchmark, not a promise — your own result depends on how long the list has been left, how the messages are written and how quickly your team responds when someone replies.
Isn't a number this large too good to be true?
The figure looks big because dormant lists are big and nobody adds them up. A practice with 6,000 records, a fifth of them lapsed, at £400 a visit, is looking at a substantial number before any recovery rate is applied. It is an estimate of what is sitting there, not a forecast of what will arrive — which is why the next step is testing it rather than believing it.
Won't contacting old patients annoy them?
Not if the message is written properly. Most lapsed patients drifted rather than left — they moved job, had a baby, missed one recall and felt awkward about it. A short message removing the awkwardness gets a warmer response than practices expect. What causes complaints is aggressive chasing and offers that feel like a sales campaign.
Aren't these patients gone to another practice?
Some are, and those are a quick no. A large share are not registered anywhere and simply have not thought about it. That is why reactivation costs so much less than advertising to strangers — you are not persuading someone to choose a dentist, you are reminding someone who already chose you.
What do you actually do with our list?
We work it with a written sequence across email and SMS, handle the replies, and book the ones who want to come in straight into your diary. Your team is not writing messages or chasing responses — they see appointments appear. The first 100 patients are on us, with no contract and nothing upfront.
Is our patient data safe?
It is handled under a written agreement, used only to contact your patients on your behalf, and never sold, shared or used for anything else. If you decide not to continue, the data comes back or is deleted at your instruction. Ask us for the detail before anything is transferred — the answer should be in writing, from us or from any supplier.
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