Dental · From Chapter 3 of The Inactive Patient List

Inactive-patient value estimator

What your inactive list is worth in its first year back, after you take out the patients who would have come back anyway and pay for the outreach. It prints every line of the arithmetic so you can check it against your own sheet.

Totals only. Type counts and averages from your reports. Never enter names, dates of birth, chart notes or anything else that identifies a patient.
Stays in your browser. Nothing you type is sent, saved or tracked. Close the tab and it's gone.
An estimate, not a forecast. Return rates and the baseline are assumptions until your first campaign replaces them (Chapter 9).

Kestrel Park Family Dental is a composite practice from the book. Its inputs reproduce Appendix B.

1. Value of one returning patient

Use collected money, not fees.

First visit collected ($)

Exam, X-rays and cleaning

Routine visit collected ($)

Repeat-visit share in year one (%) assumption

Average old treatment plan ($)

Inactive patients only

Still-valid share of an old plan (%) assumption

The dentist's call

Accepted in year one (%) assumption

2. Cost of one attempt

Charged for every reachable patient in a segment you work, whether or not they come back.

Postage and messages per reachable patient ($)

Staff minutes per reachable patient

Loaded staff cost per hour ($)

3. Baseline and capacity

The baseline is the share of all inactive patients, reachable or not, who book on their own during the campaign window.

Would return anyway, per window (%) assumption

Hygiene hours per returner

Open hygiene hours in the window

Leave blank for no limit

4. Segments, newest first

One card per segment of the clean list (Chapter 5). Hygiene hours are filled in this order. Haven't segmented yet? Use one segment, a cautious return rate, and write "rough" on the result.

Estimate · synthetic · first year only

Net, first year —

By segment

Range and floor

The floor sets every old treatment plan to zero: cleanings and exams only. Show the dentist the floor first.

Step by step

Every multiplication, in the order the book does it.

The formula

Run once for each segment.

Incremental returners: reachable × return rate − all patients in the segment × baseline rate (never below zero)
Value per returner: first visit + repeat-visit share × routine visit + open-plan share × still-valid share × acceptance × average old plan
Cost: reachable × (contact cost + staff minutes ÷ 60 × hourly staff cost)
Net: incremental returners × value per returner − cost

Returners that don't fit in the open hygiene hours aren't counted, but a segment that is worked at all still pays its full outreach cost. A segment with no incremental returners isn't worked and costs nothing.

What this leaves out

Everything left out would make the real figure larger, not smaller: new treatment the dentist diagnoses at the returning visit, family members who follow a patient back, referrals, and every year after the first. There's no lifetime multiplier.

"Reachable" means a working phone number, email or address exists. It doesn't mean it may be used for every kind of message. Check consent and privacy rules before the first message goes out; the book's dated rules pages are planned and awaiting review.

The calculation is the book's reference code, ported line for line and checked against its hand-worked cases before each release. See the editorial policy for how numbers are labelled.