Notes from the front desk
Plain answers on recall, missed calls, reviews and the rules around them. Every number here comes with a link to where it came from.
What a lapsed patient is actually worth to your practice
Most practices carry hundreds of patients who stopped coming in. Here is how to put a defensible number on that list, using figures you can check yourself.
Your recall list is bigger than the report says it is
Most practice software undercounts overdue patients, for three predictable reasons. Here is how to find the ones the standard report quietly leaves out.
Twelve questions to ask a dental marketing agency before you sign
Most take under a minute to answer. The ones that get a vague answer are the ones that matter, and the pattern tells you more than the pitch.
Who owns your patient data and your phone number
The answer should be you. Three clauses decide it, and they are usually in the agreement you skimmed. Check them before you need them.
What "reactivation" means, and how to count it honestly
Two vendors can report very different reactivation numbers from identical work. The difference is definitions. Set them before the campaign starts.
Five things to fix before you spend a dollar on new patient ads
Ads send people to a practice. If the practice cannot catch them, you are paying to fill a bucket with a hole in it. These five cost almost nothing.
Four numbers worth watching every Monday
Most practice dashboards track things you cannot act on. These four take a minute to read and each one points at a specific thing to fix this week.
The new patient who called at 6:40pm and never called back
After-hours calls are the easiest revenue in a dental practice to lose, because losing them leaves no trace. Here is how to find out how bad yours is.
What consent actually requires before you text a patient
The rules changed, then a court changed them back. Here is where US text-message consent stands now, and what a dental practice should put on its intake form.
How to reply to a bad review without breaking HIPAA
The instinct to defend your practice in public is the exact instinct that gets dental offices fined. Three templates and one rule cover almost every case.
Revenue share or a flat fee: how to actually compare the two
A percentage of recovered revenue sounds safer than a monthly fee. Run it on your own list first, because the crossover comes faster than expected.
How to read a dental marketing guarantee before you sign it
Most marketing guarantees are written to sound like a refund and pay out as more work. Six questions separate a real promise from a comfortable sentence.
Asking every patient for a Google review, without breaking the rules
Google tightened its review policy in April 2026. Several things dental practices commonly do are now explicit violations. Here is what changed.
Which of your marketing vendors actually needs a BAA
A Business Associate Agreement follows the patient data, not the job title. Most practices have at least one vendor holding data without one.
Why a postcard still gets opened when a text gets ignored
Mail is the channel most practices abandoned. For patients whose phone numbers have gone stale, it is often the only one still reaching them.
Why your practice needs its own A2P registration to text patients
Business texting in the US runs through carrier registration. If a vendor texts your patients under their brand, messages get filtered or blocked.