Why Patient Retention Is Key To The Success Of Your Dental Practice

Have you ever wondered what the key to long-term success is for a dental practice? Achieving sustainable success for your dental practice may be your main aim, but knowing how to make this a reality can be challenging. The dentist industry in the United States is thriving, with a current market size of $171 billion, and this figure is expected to continue to increase over the next five years. However, you may be wondering how to ensure your practice can enjoy a larger share of this thriving market.

Attracting a constant stream of new patients may seem like the best way to grow your practice and boost your profits. But, the time and costs involved in continually attracting new patients can soon add up. While attracting new patients will always play a role in the expansion of your practice, it is patient retention that will hold the key to the success of your dental practice.

Why Patient Retention is Important

Retaining your existing patients is crucial for long-term success in the dental industry. But, patient retention is something that many dental practices struggle to achieve. Here are some of the reasons patient retention is so important:

• The dental industry is known to have one of the highest attrition rates in healthcare at over 20 percent. This highlights the importance of actively reducing the attrition rate by focusing on patient retention.

• Reducing patient attrition rates and increasing retention is vital to sustaining a consistent level of success for your business. 

• Strategies for retaining your existing patients are often far more cost-effective than those aimed at attracting new patients. The higher cost of attracting new customers over boosting customer retention is recognized throughout the business world. According to the Harvard Business Review, efforts to acquire new customers can cost up to 25 times more than retaining existing ones. 

• Established patients become advocates for your business and are likely to recommend your services to their families and friends. This is backed up by research that shows that 70 to 80 percent of new patient referrals come from your active patients.

• Existing patients already trust your practice and are more likely to try your new products and services.

How to Improve Patient Retention Rates

There is no doubt that patient retention is crucial to the success of your practice. Here are some of the ways that patient retention rates can be improved:

Expand Dental Services

Expanding the range of in-house dental services that your practice offers is an excellent way to increase patient retention while also boosting your profits. Your patients will feel far more comfortable receiving specialist treatments in your dental office rather than being referred somewhere new. 

Using Complete Specialty Solutions will help to increase patient retention rates by providing a specialist to come to your practice and provide specialty dental services in-house. 

Build Social Media Presence 

Social media is a popular tool used by dental practices to boost their online presence. Research conducted by DentaVox shows that 97 percent of patients believe that dentists should use social media for professional purposes. 

Utilizing social media for your dental practice will not only help to attract new patients but can also help to retain existing ones. Social media can be used as a tool to reactivate inactive patients. Using social media as a platform to share your new services and promote your practice can be an effective way to encourage engagement and increase bookings from existing patients.

Introduce Automation

Nowadays, everyone’s lives are busy, so finding ways to make it quicker and easier for your patients to access your services is essential. If you want to retain your existing patients, improving their experience when using your services is vital. Automation can be a great opportunity to improve the patient experience and make your patients more likely to return again and again. 

Introducing functionality such as automated online appointment booking systems is an excellent way to make it easier for your patients to return to your practice for further treatments. Using an online booking system allows your patients to schedule their appointments at their convenience, which increases the chances of them returning to your practice.

Next Steps

Patient retention is key to the long-term success of your dental practice. Offering specialist treatments in-house will help you retain your existing patients and increase recall rates. If you are interested in reducing patient attrition rates, Complete Specialty Solutions can help. 

Contact us today to discover how we can help your practice achieve the success it deserves.