How a poor New Patient Experience costs your practice

Let's take a look at how average or poor service and communication from the front desk and in the surgery cost your practice big.

The new patient is the life blood of the practice. New patients bring new opportunities for potential treatment production, in particular for the high value treatment that sustains a successful, profitable practice. That is why we consider them to be the most important person in the practice.

So why do some practices provide so little training to their front desk who play the critical role in the NP journey? So much time, effort and expense goes into acquiring each new patient yet they can be let down by poor service at the front door.  

Are you thinking "Well, it doesn't matter if FD aren't that great. As long as they book them in, I'll convert them when they're in the chair".

Let's break that down...

It's been estimated that 10-20% of patients stop coming to your practice (this is called your attrition rate). Think that's too high?

1. Run a report for the number of patients you saw only once. They came for a comprehensive exam, a consult or an emergency perhaps and never returned.
2. Then run a report for how many overdue recalls you had in the last year. What's your recall success rate (recalls completed on time), is it above 80%?
3. Lastly, run a report on the dollar value of incomplete treatment in your system.

• If every new patient is worth an average of $1500 - how much have you lost?
• If every recall was worth $200 twice in a year - how much did you miss out on?
• What if 80% of the incomplete treatment was performed - how much didn't you collect?

Add those 3 numbers up. You could call this the true cost of an unsatisfactory experience with your practice.

Somewhere along the way, the patient's level of satisfaction with your practice or perceived value of treatment diminished.

BAD SERVICE HURTS YOUR PRACTICE

There's a saying: "It takes months to find a new customer and only seconds to lose one".

These are the ways in which average or bad service can have a negative impact:

• Incompetency and rudeness are the 2 biggest reasons patients will leave
• The longer you take to fix a problem, the less likely the patient will return
• It takes 40 good reviews to make up for one bad review online
• The worse the service, the higher chance patients will think your fees are high
• No second chances. First impressions count especially on the phone
• 50% of people who feel disrespected won't come back
• 25% of patients won’t complain, they’ll simply not return
• Disgruntled patients will tell 9-15 people or more about their experience
• Social media wild fire, support and comments from friends fans the flames of outrage

It pays to remember that you may not even know you've made a bad impression - you'll only see it reflected in your patient numbers.

Make a dramatic improvement to your patient experience with your Front Desk - invest in the Aspire2d Front Desk Course