Tuesday had two hygiene no-shows and one crown prep that never arrived. Nobody wrote the number down, so by Friday it felt like a normal week. This page puts a yearly figure on it.
How the no-show cost is worked out
Take the number of no-shows in a typical week. Multiply by the average production of one appointment. Multiply by the number of weeks the office is open in a year. Then take off the share you manage to rebook, because a rebooked visit is delayed, not lost.
In words: yearly cost equals no-shows per week, times production per visit, times weeks open, times the share never rebooked.
Worked example: 4 no-shows a week, $280 per visit, 48 weeks open, 30 percent rebooked. 4 times 280 is $1,120 a week. Times 48 is $53,760. Seventy percent of that never comes back, which is $37,632 a year.
The calculator
Where to get each number
No-shows per week: run the broken appointment list in your practice software for the last four weeks and divide by four. In Open Dental the appointment status Broken is what you count. In Dentrix the Appointment Book keeps a broken appointment flag on the patient, and the Unscheduled List shows them. Eaglesoft tracks missed appointments in the appointment history.
Production per visit: last month’s production divided by last month’s completed appointments. Hygiene and doctor visits differ a lot, so run it separately if the gap matters to you.
Weeks open: count your closed weeks and subtract from 52. Most offices land between 46 and 49.
Share rebooked: the honest number is usually lower than the front desk thinks. Check 20 broken appointments from two months ago and count how many have a completed visit since.
What to do with the result
The figure is lost production, not lost profit, and it is not money anyone can recover after the fact. The useful part is the per-week line, because that is the size of the hole to fill each week. The dental no-show rate guide covers confirmation habits that lower the count. The reactivation revenue calculator does the same sum for patients who stopped coming entirely.
Calibic’s Daily Huddle (LIVE) lists tomorrow’s unconfirmed visits by name each morning, and Smart Recall (LIVE) ranks the overdue patients most likely to say yes when a slot opens. Texting those patients from Calibic is ROADMAP, so today the list goes to whoever holds the phone. Both read your practice software and never write to it. See Smart Recall.