Summary

Every December, dental offices see the same thing. Families still have a covered cleaning or two left, and they don’t get around to booking it. Then January 1 hits, calendar-year plans reset, and those visits are gone. The family loses a benefit they already paid for. The practice loses a visit that would have been the easiest one all year to fill.

Patients are ready to hear it, too. “Use it or lose it” is one of the easiest reasons to book a parent will ever get. So why don’t more offices run a year-end push? Because the office is busy too. A real campaign means someone steps away from their regular work and spends hours on the phone during the busiest month of the year.

Tots to Teens Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics handed that work to Annie. From August through October, Annie booked 343 recare appointments across six locations. In October, the first full month with all six offices live, she booked 127. Half of those came from parents who called back after hearing her voicemail. The front desk teams kept doing their regular jobs the whole time.

Challenge

The end of the year should be the easiest time to fill a schedule. Patients know their benefits are about to run out, so there’s less pushback when the office calls. But a use it or lose it campaign doesn’t run itself. Someone has to pull the overdue list, sit down, and start dialing. In December, nobody has that time. Front desks are handling holiday schedule changes, staff PTO, and patients rushing to finish treatment. So most offices never run the campaign at all.

The offices that do try hit a second wall. Only about 1 in 4 people answer the first call. A campaign that works needs a second round of calls, and then a third. That turns into a project someone has to own on top of their regular job, and it’s the kind of extra work that burns a team out.

Pediatric practices have one more layer. The patient isn’t the one managing the calendar. A six-year-old doesn’t know their benefits reset in January. Their parent might, but that parent is also handling holiday plans, winter break childcare, and a dozen other things. “Book Emma’s cleaning” keeps sliding to next week until next week is next year.

Most practices set recare at six months to a year. So a child who’s overdue for a cleaning is a child who likely still has a covered visit left this year. Unused preventive visits don’t roll over. When a family misses the window, the benefit is gone. So is the chair time, right before the January slowdown.

Across Tots to Teens’ six locations, each with its own front desk and its own daily rhythm, recare calls got made whenever there was a gap in the day. Where texting existed, one message went out, and if a parent didn’t reply right away, that was the end of it. When the deadline is real, one shot isn’t enough.

Implementation

Tots to Teens gave the recare list to Annie at all six locations, and that was the only change to the office’s workflow. Lytle and Cibolo went live in August, and Rittiman, Brooks, Safari, and Shaenfield followed in mid-September.

Annie calls families and books appointments on the spot when a parent picks up. When they don’t, she leaves a voicemail, sends a text, and calls again. Round two and round three happen without anyone at the front desk keeping track. Parents can book whenever it suits them, including the evenings and weekends when they finally have a minute.

Meanwhile, the front desk teams kept doing what they were already doing: checking patients in, answering new patient calls, and verifying insurance. Nobody had to give up an afternoon to work through a call list.

Because Annie started in August, outreach is spread across the fall instead of crammed into December. Families hear from Annie before the year-end schedule fills up, so more of them get a spot while there’s still room.

Results (August 1 to October 31)

• 343 recare appointments booked across six locations

• 127 booked in October, the first full month with all six offices live

• 120 booked by parents who called back after an Annie voicemail

• 133 booked live on the phone and 90 booked by text

• 3 in 10 call and text bookings happened outside office hours

• $36,954 in production from the 145 visits completed so far, about $255 per visit

Voicemail callbacks grew every month: 20 in August, 36 in September, and 64 in October. By October, half of everything Annie booked came from a parent who heard her message and called back on their own time. Those are the families a single round of calls would have missed.

Annie has booked more than 100 recare visits for the group every month since August. If November and December keep October’s pace, that’s about 250 more families on the schedule before their benefits reset.

The schedule stays full, patients use the benefits they already paid for, and the team never had to take on a campaign on top of their regular work.

Still have families on your recare list with benefits about to expire? See how Annie works your list before January 1. Book a demo