Keep Your Patients Active In Your Practice
In many of my clients' offices I see various criteria used to determine when to make a patient inactive in the system. Usually these protocols are decided on the fly by team members whose efforts to contact patients have gone unanswered. As a result, they move them to an inactive status to keep their patient list clean. I don’t like a long To Do list, and I’m sure you don’t either. Anything we can do to clean it up sometimes feels like a relief. But, when it comes to your patients, don’t give up on them too soon.
What really is happening when you're 'cleaning up your list' is you’re taking those patients and moving them into a category that will keep them from receiving all of the necessary communications to stay active in the practice. I have a certain family member, I won’t mention names, who went five years without going to the dentist. I was pulling my hair out because I am the dental police for my family. I kept reminding them by saying: “Hey it’s been two years. It’s been three years.” Finally, I just had to let it go. I am sure the office where this family member was a patient gave up many years. However, if you were to ask that family member if they had a dentist, or who is your dentist, they would without hesitation mention the name of the practice where they last had dental treatment. Sometimes one, two, three or even five years can go by and a patient can still consider you their dentist. You want to keep these patients active in the computer system.
Some software will give you the option to either inactivate or archive your patients. I recommend that you never archive a patient unless you know they are not coming because they requested x-rays, they moved out of state, they’re deceased, or they made it very clear that they weren’t coming back. You can still reactivate them if they do come back, but you only want to archive patients that you know aren’t coming back into the practice. If you can use an inactive category without removing the patient from your continuing care list, then use that status. But, do not write them off by putting them into a category so that they’re not getting communication from your practice anymore.
To a patient not going to a dentist for a year doesn’t feel like a long time. So I want you to look at this as an opportunity in your practice to go back a few years – maybe three years – to see if there are some patients who still consider you their dentist. Your assignment is to go back in your computer system, see if there are some patients you haven't communicated with in a while and reactivate those patients. Do not give up on your patients too soon.