The marketing company wants $4,000 a month to bring in new patients. Meanwhile the practice already has 840 patients overdue for hygiene, $38,000 of treatment planned and not booked, and a no-show rate nobody has measured. Growth from your own data is cheaper, and it is first.
This page works through five sources in order of effort. Each has a formula and a worked example using one practice’s figures (illustrative, not a benchmark). Run the same sums with yours.
1. Overdue recall
The quiet one. Patients who used to come twice a year and stopped.
Formula: overdue patients multiplied by the share you expect to reactivate, multiplied by the average hygiene visit production.
Example: 840 overdue patients. If 15% rebook after a call, that is 126 visits. At $240 per hygiene visit including the exam and X-rays, that is $30,240. Each visit also surfaces new treatment, which is where most of the value actually lands.
The recall benchmark page covers how to pull the list from Open Dental, Dentrix and Eaglesoft and how to rank it.
2. Unscheduled treatment
The largest number in most practices, and the easiest to see.
Formula: planned, unbooked treatment dollars multiplied by the share booked after follow-up.
Example: $38,420 planned and not booked across 61 patients. A seven-day follow-up call on each books 30% of the dollars: $11,526. That is money found. It is recovered only when the practice software shows each case booked, completed and paid, and the unscheduled treatment page explains how to rank the 61 so the best calls go first.
3. Unused benefits before the year end
A deadline attached to item 2.
Formula: patients with $300 or more remaining and a planned, unbooked procedure, multiplied by average remaining benefit.
Example: 190 patients, average $820 remaining: $155,800 of insurance money that expires. Even a 20% booking rate puts $31,000 of insurer-paid production into December. See the end of year benefits page.
4. No-shows
Not new revenue, but revenue you already scheduled and then lost.
Formula: missed appointments per year multiplied by average production per appointment, multiplied by the share you do not refill.
Example: 83 missed a month is 996 a year. At $310 per appointment, with one in four refilled, the net loss is $231,570 a year. Cutting the rate from 9% to 6% recovers a third of that: about $77,000. The no-show page has a calculator.
5. Collections
Production that was done and not paid for.
Formula: net collection rate = payments received divided by (production minus contractual adjustments).
Example: $149,000 net production a month, $141,000 collected: 94.6%. Moving it to 98% is $5,000 a month, or $60,000 a year, and it is mostly claims follow-up and asking for the patient share at the visit. The net collection rate page walks through the drift.
Adding it up
| Source | Found (illustrative) | What makes it recovered |
|---|---|---|
| Overdue recall | $30,240 | Visit completed and paid |
| Unscheduled treatment | $11,526 | Case booked, completed and paid |
| Expiring benefits | $31,000 | Case completed before plan year end and paid |
| No-shows | $77,000 | Slot kept or refilled |
| Collections | $60,000 | Payment posted |
About $210,000 a year, from a practice already producing around $1.8 million gross. None of it needs a new patient. All of it needs someone to run the reports weekly and make the calls.
The first three overlap: the same patient can be overdue, have a plan and have benefits. Count each patient once, in the bucket with the biggest number.
What about new patients?
Marketing works when the five sources above are already being worked, because every new patient becomes a recall, a plan and a benefit next year. Done in the other order, the practice fills a bucket with a hole in it. The case acceptance page is the piece that decides how much of each new patient’s treatment actually happens.
What Calibic adds
Revenue Recovery, Smart Recall, the insurance benefits list and the KPI dashboards are LIVE. Calibic reads appointments, recall records, treatment plans, insurance benefits and the ledger from Open Dental, Dentrix and Eaglesoft (read-only, it never changes a record) and keeps the five lists above current every morning, each patient counted once, ranked by value and likelihood. Found and recovered are shown as separate figures; a dollar is recovered only when the practice software shows it booked, completed and paid. Calibic does not text or call patients today; that is coming.
Next step: the practice health check runs these five sums on your own numbers in two minutes.