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.
