Dental · From Chapters 3 and 9 of The Overdue Patient List
Recall flow calculator
Follow one month of recall visits from the checkout counter to the inactive line, then set a better routine beside today's. It counts each patient the routine keeps off the inactive list once, and values only the one recall visit each would have missed in the first year: a floor, not a forecast. Every line of the arithmetic is printed so you can check it against Appendix C.
- Totals only. Type counts, shares and costs 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. The stage baselines, the follow-up responses, the lapse rate and the start lag are assumptions until your monthly recall record replaces them with measured rates (Chapter 9).
Kestrel Park Family Dental is a composite practice from the book. Its inputs load first and reproduce Appendix B.
1. Last month at checkout
Recall visits kept in a month, and the share that ended with the next hygiene visit on the schedule. The target is what the proposed routine books.
Cancelled or missed, not rebooked
The practice's target (Chapter 5)
2. The overdue stages, newest first
Months past the due date, up to the inactive line. "Back anyway" is the share of patients entering a stage who book with only the automated reminders. "Reachable" means a working phone or text channel exists; it says nothing about consent (Chapter 8).
3. Front-desk time and cost
Charged for every patient a person works, whether or not they come back.
4. Value in year one
Use collected money, not fees. A better checkout shows up one recall interval later; follow-up after a start lag.
Months
Months
5. Hours available
Open hygiene hours check whether the chairs can take the kept visits. Limited follow-up hours get their own line under "Range"; stages are worked in order until the hours run out.
Leave blank for no limit
Estimate · synthetic · one month in steady state, first year only
By stage
One month, as Appendix B lays it out. Patient counts carry decimals on purpose: each is an average over many months, not a head count.
Today
The proposed routine
The range
Each version is compared with today's routine. Either change alone helps; the full routine is the headline. Quote the net with the word "floor" beside it.
Step by step
Every line, in the order Appendix C prints it, with your numbers in place. Lines show two decimal places; the calculator carries every digit and rounds only what it shows.
The formula
Run once for today's routine and once for the proposed one.
- Entering the overdue band
- recall visits − recall visits × booked share + recall visits × booked share × lapse rate
- Each stage, newest first
- back anyway = entering × stage baseline; reached = (entering − back anyway) × reach rate (worked stages only); back because followed up = reached × follow-up response; passing on = entering − back anyway − back because followed up
- Crossing the inactive line
- what passes the last stage
- Kept off the inactive list, counted once
- crossing today − crossing proposed; checkout part = (entering today − entering proposed) × crossing today ÷ entering today; follow-up part = the rest
- First-year floor
- (checkout part × (12 − recall interval) + follow-up part × (12 − start lag)) × collected per recall visit − checkout cost − follow-up cost
- Costs
- checkout = extra bookings a month × minutes per booking ÷ 60 × hourly cost × 12; follow-up = (follow-up cost a month proposed − today) × 12, where each patient worked costs messaging + minutes ÷ 60 × hourly cost
When follow-up hours are limited, stages are worked in order and a stage gets only as many contacts as the hours left allow (hours × 60 ÷ minutes per patient), and pays only for those.
What this leaves out
Everything left out would make the real figure larger, not smaller: the visit after the kept one, treatment the dentist finds at the visit, family members booked the same day, and every year after the first. A patient who would have come back anyway, only later, earns nothing here.
It's a steady-state model of one month, for patients on a single recall interval. It doesn't simulate the first months one by one; the year-one months stand in for the ramp. The overdue-list size is an estimate (patients who pass a stage stay all of it; patients who come back leave halfway through); your own report is the real count.
"Reachable" means a working channel exists. It doesn't mean it may be used for every kind of message. Check consent and privacy rules before the first call or text; the dated rules pages are 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.