1. Require your front desk to report every daily on how many hygiene patients did not schedule their next appointment. No more than one a day is acceptable.

2. Keep a running list of those patients of those who did not schedule and follow up on them.

3. When calling the patient, if you do not reach them, let them know you will try back in about a week. Repeat a week later if needed.

4. After a month or so continue to make calls based on your knowledge of the patient without becoming obnoxious or seeming "desperate". How many calls is based on what is known about the patient. You can't be rote about how often to call i.e. you know the patient is out of the country for six weeks, illness, etc.

5. Have the person doing such calls (also include those who never scheduled for operative) keep and report the following daily statistics:

a. Number of calls made.

b. Number of patients spoken to.

c. Number of patients scheduled To begin with set a quota for one reactivation per day.

 Kevin Tighe, Cambridge Dental Consultants, Senior Consultant, got bitten hard by the business and marketing bug during long summer days working at his dad's Madison Avenue ad agency. After joining Cambridge as a speaker in the mid-1990s, Kevin went on to become Cambridge’s senior consultant and eventually CEO. Cambridge Dental Consultants is a full-service dental practice management company offering customized dental office manuals. Frustrated? High overhead? Schedule a chat with Kevin at .