Every practice has a list of patients who haven't been in for a preventive appointment in 12+ months. It's sitting in the EHR right now. Most practices don't do anything with it.
Recall — reaching out to lapsed patients to get them back on the schedule — has the best return of any patient acquisition activity because the acquisition cost is already paid. You have their contact info. You have a clinical relationship. The cost to reach them is a text message.
But recall usually happens inconsistently — when the schedule looks thin — which means it misses most of the opportunity.
The math
A dental practice with 1,500 active patients might have 300-400 who are 12+ months overdue for a cleaning. If 20% book after an outreach, that's 60-80 appointments from patients already in your system. The automation costs a few hundred dollars a month to run. The math is straightforward.
The automation
A continuous system rather than a periodic campaign. It queries your EHR on a schedule, identifies patients who just crossed the 12-month mark, and adds them to a sequence.
Typical sequence: text or email on day 1, follow-up on day 5 if no response, different channel on day 10. If they book, they're removed. If three attempts get no response, they go into a low-frequency long-term list.
Messages should include a direct booking link — not "call us to schedule." Every friction point you add reduces conversion rate.
If your EHR has built-in recall tools, evaluate them first, but be realistic. Most are limited — they let you build a list but the outreach is clunky and the reporting is thin. Custom recall systems beat built-in when you need consistent, measurable results.
