How recare calls increase completed treatments

Most practices have it. A patient agrees to treatment, you block time, the plan sits there, and nothing happens. It is rarely about the dentistry. More often it is life, uncertainty, money questions, or a patient who simply does not know what to do next. Recare calls are non-clinical follow up calls that help patients get back on the schedule, confirm what they are booked for, and answer basic admin questions. This is not clinical advice and it is not a guarantee of completion. It is a dependable communication process that builds trust, reassures patients, and removes small bits of friction that cause treatment plans to be dropped.

Why planned treatment gets delayed or dropped

Patients often pause for everyday reasons, not because they do not care

When a treatment plan does not get completed, it usually is not one big issue. It is small barriers stacking up. The practice might only see a quiet diary gap and a plan sitting in the chart. The patient is living a normal week and putting off a decision.

Common non-clinical blockers are simple. Time is the big one. Work shifts change, childcare falls through, or they cannot face taking another morning off. Cost concerns come up too, especially if the patient is not sure what they will owe on the day. Some people are confused about next steps, such as whether they need a separate booking for hygiene first, or which appointment is for which part of the plan.

Insurance uncertainty is another frequent stall point. If a patient does not know what their plan covers, they may wait rather than risk a surprise bill. Anxiety plays a part as well. Not everyone will say it out loud, and it can show up as last minute cancellations or unanswered calls. Then there are the practical misses: the practice calls once, the patient is at work, and the moment passes. Life changes happen too. Moving house, a new job, illness in the family, or a change in finances can knock dental plans down the list.

It helps to separate two situations in day-to-day terms. Unscheduled treatment is when there is planned care sitting there, but no appointment booked yet. An inactive patient is someone who has stopped attending altogether, often past the point where reminders are being returned, and you are not getting any response.

The tricky bit is this: the practice often does not know the true reason unless it asks. Notes in the record rarely tell you if the patient is worried about cost, confused about what is next, or simply missed the call twice. A calm, human follow up is usually the quickest way to find out what is actually in the way, so you can handle the admin side properly and stop a plan drifting into the background.

What recare calls are (and are not)

Clear boundaries help you stay compliant and keep the conversation focused on admin support.

Recare calls are non-clinical follow up calls that support appointment booking and planned care follow up. The aim is simple: help patients understand what happens next, offer practical booking options, and remove small admin blockers that stop them getting scheduled.

They are not clinical conversations. The caller does not diagnose, give clinical advice, interpret X-rays, or influence clinical decisions. They also do not try to persuade a patient into treatment. If a patient needs clinical input, the call should be routed back to the practice so a clinician can speak with them.

In day-to-day terms, appropriate call topics are usually straightforward. Confirming what the next step is in the plan. Offering appointment times and explaining what to expect in terms of visit length. Reminding the patient they have outstanding planned care that is not yet booked. Answering process questions like how to reschedule, what paperwork is needed, or whether they should arrive early.

It also includes knowing where the boundary sits. If a patient asks, “Do I really need this?” or “Is this going to hurt?”, that is a clinical question. A good recare process acknowledges the question, notes it clearly, and arranges a call back from the practice team who can answer properly.

Recare fits alongside patient billing and insurance verification, but it is a different lane. Patient billing support focuses on patient balances and billing communication, including follow up on amounts due. Insurance verification is checking eligibility and coverage before a visit, so the practice and patient have fewer surprises.

Where they connect is in the handoff. Recare can flag that a patient is hesitating because they are unsure about cost or cover, then the next step is insurance verification or a billing conversation with the right person. In practice, it is often better to pause scheduling until the money question is answered than to book an appointment that cancels later.

How human follow up increases completed treatment

It comes down to making timely contact, clearing up what is holding them back, and booking a real next step.

Treatment plans do not usually fail because a patient made a firm decision to stop. More often, the plan just goes quiet. A call that lands at the right time can stop that drift. If you reach someone when they are between meetings, in the car, or doing the school run, you can catch the moment when they are actually able to look at dates and make a decision.

Timing matters because “I will call back” is rarely a real commitment. It is a polite way to end the conversation when they are busy. If your team only tries once, the plan cools off. A human follow up gives you more than one chance to connect, without turning it into pressure.

The other mechanism is clarity. A real conversation surfaces the reason the patient is stuck, and it is often not what you assume from the record. They might not understand what the next visit is for, they might be worried about cost, or they might have had a bad experience last time and feel embarrassed about it. You will not get that from a reminder text. You get it from a calm, practical call where they can explain, in their own words, what is going on.

Once you know the blocker, you can route it properly. If it is about cover, that can trigger insurance verification so the patient gets clearer information about eligibility and benefits. If it is about a balance or payment arrangements, it becomes a patient billing conversation with the right person. If it is clinical, it needs a call back from the practice. The key point is that the patient recare call is what uncovers the issue early, before the plan sits untouched for months.

Then comes commitment. A clear next step means a date and time, not a vague intention. People generally do not act on “sometime next month”. They act on “Tuesday at 3:10” with a confirmation and any prep notes they need. Booking the appointment turns a general willingness into an action the patient can keep.

Polite persistence is part of the job, too. Patients miss calls. They screen unknown numbers. They listen to voicemail while making dinner and forget to call back. A good recare process plans for this with a few spaced attempts, clear voicemails, and an easy route to return the call. Not relentless. Just consistent.

One small judgement call that helps: if you keep getting no answer, vary the time of day before you stop. The same patient who never answers at 11:00 might pick up at 18:00. You will not know unless you try, and you can still keep it respectful and brief.

None of this guarantees a patient will proceed. People still pause or decline. But in day-to-day practice operations, timely contact, a real conversation, and a booked next step are the practical levers that reduce plans quietly dropping off your schedule.

Trust and reassurance: what patients need to hear

Keep the call steady, answer the real worry, and make the next step feel manageable

Recare calls work best when they sound like a normal, helpful conversation. Not a pitch. People can tell when a caller is trying to win an argument or rush them into booking. A calm, respectful tone does the opposite. It lowers the temperature and gives the patient space to decide.

A practical approach is to acknowledge the concern and move forward without debating it. If they say they are worried about cost, you do not need to correct them or persuade them. You can simply recognise it and explain the next step for getting clearer information. Same with time off work, childcare, anxiety, or a past bad experience. You are not there to prove them wrong. You are there to help them take the next sensible step.

It also helps to explain what happens at the next visit in plain, non-clinical terms. Patients often stall because the next appointment feels like a black box. Keep it simple: how long the visit is booked for, whether they need to bring anything, and what admin steps happen at the start. For example, you might confirm they should bring their insurance details if the practice does not already have them, and that any known patient portion will be discussed before anything is scheduled further.

If insurance comes up, stay careful with your wording. Insurance verification is an eligibility and coverage check, not a promise of payment. If you do not know the exact cover, say so. Offer to have the practice verify benefits and call them back with what is confirmed, rather than guessing on the phone.

Make it easy for patients to ask questions. A simple “What would you like to know before we put something in the diary?” goes a long way. And when the question is clinical, do not try to answer it. Offer to pass it to the clinical team for a call back, and set expectations about how that hand-off works. That keeps trust intact and protects the practice from mixed messages.

One small judgement call: if a patient sounds hesitant, slow down and summarise the plan in one sentence, then pause. People often fill silence with the real issue. That is usually what you need to solve before booking anything.

Reducing dropped treatment plans with a consistent workflow

Make follow-up part of the weekly routine, not something that only happens when the diary looks quiet

Most treatment plans do not “fall off” because the patient said no. They fall off because nobody is quite sure who is meant to call, when to call, and what happens next after the first attempt. A simple workflow fixes that. It also makes your revenue less dependent on one busy receptionist remembering everything.

Start by being clear on when a recare call gets triggered. In day-to-day admin, these are the moments that matter: after an exam where treatment is diagnosed and discussed, after a missed appointment, after a plan is declined or postponed, and after insurance information changes (if you know about the change). Each of those points creates a decision for the patient, and silence is a decision too.

Then decide how you prioritise, because not every list can be worked in one afternoon. I usually put high-value or time-sensitive plans near the top, along with unfinished multi-visit plans where the patient has already started. Another practical group to prioritise is patients overdue for hygiene who also have treatment needs. If they come back for hygiene, you often get a natural chance to re-open the treatment conversation without it feeling like a separate “sales” call.

Cadence does not need to be complicated. Make multiple attempts, vary the times you call, and document the outcome each time. The documentation is key because it prevents duplicate work and awkward calls like “I tried you yesterday” when it was actually three weeks ago. It also lets you see patterns, like patients who only answer early morning or early evening.

To keep it operational, every contact needs to end in a clear status. That status should be simple enough that anyone on your team can pick it up without re-reading the whole history: scheduled, pending call-back, needs clinical follow up, not interested, or unreachable. “Needs clinical follow up” is for questions or concerns you cannot answer on an admin call, like symptoms, suitability, or risks. You log the question and route it to the clinical team for a call back.

One small judgement call that helps owners: if a patient is marked “unreachable” more than once, do not leave it vague. Decide what “unreachable” means for your practice in practical terms, then stop the cycle and move the record to a long-term reminder or a note for their next inbound contact. That keeps your team focused on patients who are still in the decision window, without pestering people who are clearly not engaging.

Common friction points recare calls can solve quickly

Get specific about the small obstacles that stop patients booking, then remove them in one clear call.

Most unfinished plans do not stall because the patient is against treatment. They stall on practical friction. The diary feels hard. The cost feels unclear. Insurance feels like a question mark. Or the patient simply is not sure what happens next.

A good recare call is not a lecture. It is a short, human check-in that clears one obstacle and ends with a next step.

Scheduling friction. This is the big one. People want to book, but they cannot see where it fits. On a call, you can offer two or three options, then pause and let them choose. If your practice allows it, you can also talk through splitting appointments, for example first visit and second visit, so the patient can commit without needing a perfect long slot. Short-notice openings help too, but only if you set expectations clearly and do not make it feel like pressure.

Money questions. Many patients are not asking for a discount. They are asking what to expect. A recare call can explain the next step for estimates and patient billing without quoting figures you do not have. That might be: we can request or confirm an estimate, then the practice will let you know the expected patient portion, and we can talk through payment expectations before you attend. Keep it simple. If the patient wants a precise number and you do not have it, say that plainly and offer the correct next step.

Insurance uncertainty. This is where insurance verification fits. It can confirm eligibility and coverage checks, meaning whether the patient is currently covered and what the plan says it covers in general. It cannot promise what will be paid, and it cannot replace the insurer’s final decision. A recare call can set that boundary without sounding defensive, then route the request for verification so the patient is not stuck guessing.

Confusion about sequencing. Patients often agree in the chair, then go home and lose the thread. They forget whether they are waiting on the practice, waiting on insurance, or meant to book. A call can summarise what comes next in one sentence, then name the owner of the next step. For example: “Next, we book visit one, and we will request an estimate in the background.” Or: “Next, we need a clinician to answer your question, then we will call you to schedule.”

One small judgement call that helps: if the patient has more than one obstacle at once, pick the one that blocks everything else and solve that first. Usually it is either diary access or uncertainty about cost. If you try to cover everything, the call runs long and still ends without a decision.

What outsourced recare support looks like with Smart Dental Billing

A clear, non-clinical follow-up service that helps patients take the next step

Outsourced recare support means Smart Dental Billing makes off-site, non-clinical calls on behalf of your practice to follow up with patients who are due, overdue, or part-way through planned care. The aim is simple: speak to the patient, remove basic friction, and get a clear outcome for your team to act on.

These calls stay firmly on the administrative side. We do not give clinical advice or discuss diagnosis. If a patient has a clinical question, the call is used to capture it clearly and route it back to the right person in the practice.

When a patient is ready to book, the call follows your scheduling rules. That includes the types of appointments you want offered, any limits on short-notice slots, and what counts as a suitable next visit. If the patient is not ready, the call still ends with a next step, such as a planned call-back or a note for your front desk to pick up at the right time.

Recare does not sit in isolation. If the barrier is money or insurance uncertainty, it can be coordinated with insurance verification and billing support. Insurance verification is an eligibility and coverage check, not a promise of payment. Patient billing support covers follow-up on balances and patient queries about statements, again without making clinical judgements.

After contact attempts, information is captured in call notes and outcomes, then handed back to the practice in a clear, usable way. That typically includes whether the patient was reached, what they said, what they need, and what happens next. If a call-back is requested, the request and any time preferences are recorded so your team is not guessing.

To make this work smoothly, the practice needs to provide four things up front. First, the patient list and the criteria for who should be called, for example patients with unscheduled treatment, overdue hygiene, or incomplete sequences. Second, your messaging preferences, including how you want the practice described and any wording you want avoided. Third, an escalation path for clinical questions, so anything clinical is passed to a clinician or nominated lead without delay. Fourth, your scheduling rules, so calls do not create diary problems for your front desk.

One small judgement call that helps: start narrower than you think. A shorter list with clear criteria is easier to manage, and the call notes are cleaner. Once you see what patients actually ask for, you can widen the criteria without creating extra admin for your team.

Measuring whether recare calls are paying off (without guessing)

Track a few simple signals from the call list through to attended appointments, so you can judge value without relying on gut feel.

If you want to know whether recare calls are worth it, you need a thread you can follow. Not a single headline number. Just a small set of indicators that run from activity to outcomes, and then to what that means for work actually completed.

Start with inputs. This tells you whether the engine is running and whether the list is workable.

Inputs to track: number of patients to contact, contact attempts, reach rate (how many were actually spoken to), and call-backs requested. A contact attempt is one try by phone, plus any approved message left as part of your process. A call-back requested is the patient choosing a time to speak again, not a vague “maybe later”.

If the attempts are high and reach is low, it often points to list quality issues. Old numbers, patients who have moved, or patients who should not be on the list in the first place. Fixing that is usually cheaper than increasing effort.

Next, look at operational outcomes. This is where you stop counting calls and start counting real movement.

Operational outcomes to track: appointments booked, kept appointments (attended, not just scheduled), reactivated patients, and treatment plans moved from proposed to scheduled. “Proposed” means treatment has been discussed and entered, but no appointment is in the diary yet. “Scheduled” means there is a booked date and time.

Kept appointments matter more than booked appointments. Booking is progress, but attendance is the point where treatment can actually happen. If you see bookings rise but kept appointments do not, look at availability, lead times, and whether patients are being booked into suitable slots.

Then add revenue-adjacent checks. You are not trying to attribute pound-for-pound revenue to one activity. You are checking whether the backlog is shrinking and whether plans are moving in a healthier way.

Revenue-adjacent checks: reduction in aged unscheduled treatment value (if your practice tracks it) and fewer long-delayed plans. Aged unscheduled treatment value is the total value of proposed treatment that has sat unscheduled past a time period you define internally. If you do not track it today, you can still track the count of patients with old unscheduled plans as a simple starting point.

One small judgement call that helps: keep the measurement window consistent with how your diary works. If your next available appointment is weeks away, judging recare by same-week attendance will mislead you. Focus on whether plans are getting scheduled appropriately, then whether they are kept once the dates arrive.

Finally, keep context in view. Results vary. They depend on list quality, scheduling availability, and follow through by the practice once the patient is ready. Recare calls can create momentum, but they cannot create chair time, and they cannot replace clinical conversations that still need to happen in-house.

FAQ

No. Appointment reminders are for patients who already have a date and time booked. The goal is to confirm they are still coming, and to reduce no-shows or late cancellations.

Recare calls are follow-up when there is no upcoming appointment booked, or when planned care has not been completed. The aim is to re-engage the patient, answer practical questions, and help get the next visit scheduled if they are ready.

If a patient asks a clinical question, the recare caller should not answer it. A simple response is: “That’s a great question for the dentist or clinical team. I can pass your question on and have the practice call you back, or I can book you in so you can discuss it properly.”

The caller stays focused on non-clinical support – confirming contact details, offering appointment options, and making sure the right person at the practice follows up. That keeps patients reassured without crossing into clinical advice.

When a patient postpones treatment because of cost, a recare call can keep the plan from going quiet. The caller checks what the patient needs next to feel comfortable booking, then helps route them to the right non-clinical step – an updated estimate, an insurance verification check (eligibility and basic coverage), or a patient billing conversation about their balance and payment options.

We do not quote benefits or promise what insurance will pay. What we can do is make sure the patient knows who will follow up, what information is needed, and when they can expect an answer, so cost questions get resolved instead of turning into a dropped treatment plan.

Start with patients who already have planned treatment on file but nothing booked, especially where the plan involves multiple visits and can stall after the first step. Then move to patients who have been inactive the longest, prioritising those who were due back and have not been seen for a while. If you have limited chair time, focus on plans that are ready to schedule without needing a new clinical conversation first.

Your exact rules are a practice choice, but they should be consistent and easy to run from your reports. A simple approach is to sort by treatment status (proposed vs scheduled vs started), time since last visit, and whether the plan is multi-visit, then call from the top down. If you want, we can work with your team to agree the cut-offs and exclusions so the list stays clean and the calls stay focused.

An outsourced recare team needs a clean call list and clear rules. That usually means a patient list or filters (who is due, overdue, or has unscheduled planned care), the best contact details you have, and any notes you want respected such as preferred contact method or do-not-contact flags. We also need your preferred wording and tone for calls and messages, plus basic scheduling parameters so we do not book patients into slots you cannot support.

We also need a simple escalation path for anything that should go back to the practice, for example clinical questions, complaints, or sensitive situations, and a named point of contact to hand those off to quickly. Finally, agree how outcomes should be reported back, such as what statuses you want tracked (reached, booked, declined, call-back requested) and how often you want the recap so you can see what moved and what still needs attention.

Smart Dental Billing And Collection Expert Greta

Words from the experts

We often see planned treatment stall because the follow up is inconsistent, not because the patient said no. A common problem is that cost questions, timing questions, or simple uncertainty sit unanswered until the plan goes quiet. One practical method that helps is keeping a clean escalation path so anything clinical, sensitive, or outside the call script is handed back to the practice quickly.

If you want recare calls to increase completed treatments, treat them as part of the same workflow as insurance verification and patient billing support, not a separate project that only happens when the schedule looks light. That approach usually reduces dropped plans because patients get reassurance and a next step, even when the next step is simply waiting for an eligibility check or an updated estimate.