Free member resource
What an unanswered phone costs your practice, worked out with your own numbers. Two minutes, no sign up, nothing to download.
Your hands are on a patient. The phone rings. By the time you ring back, they have booked somewhere else. Nobody writes that down anywhere, so it never shows up in your accounts. This page turns it into a number.
Three people in pain who rang, and got nothing.
Eight questions
Estimates are fine. Nothing you type leaves this page, and nobody is asking for your email address. The worked example runs underneath each step so you can see what a plausible answer looks like.
How many calls do you miss in a normal week?
Check the missed calls list on your phone, or count for three working days and scale it up.
How many of those are probably new patients?
Unfamiliar numbers, and people who rang once and left no message. Be cautious here.
How many of them would probably have booked?
Not everyone who rings books. Your honest best guess, and it is fine to round down.
Worked example: 5 missed calls, 2 likely new patients, 1 who would have booked.
What is your average fee per appointment?
What patients actually pay you on average, not your top price.
How many appointments does a new patient have with you, on average?
Include the first one. Your diary can tell you this faster than you think.
What is one new patient worth to you?D × E
Your fee multiplied by the number of appointments. This one fills itself in.
Worked example: £50 a session, 4 appointments, so one new patient is worth £200.
What do missed calls cost you in a week?C × F
The patients who would have booked, multiplied by what each one is worth.
How many weeks a year do you work?
Take off holidays and CPD. Most people land somewhere between 44 and 48.
Worked example: £200 a week across 46 working weeks.
G × H
Turnover, not take-home, and some of those people may have found you another day. It is built from your own estimates, so treat it as a starting point rather than a verdict.
In the worked example that comes to £9,200 a year from one missed booking a week. It is an illustration, not a real clinic.
Three fair objections
Most people's first reaction is that it must be wrong. Here is the honest answer to the three we hear most.
Some do. An established patient almost always does, which is why question B asks you to strip them out. Someone in pain with four clinics in the search results is a different case.
It is one missed booking a week, at your own fee, over your own working year. The size comes from repetition, not from any one dramatic loss. That is exactly why it stays invisible.
Then the cost is not turnover, it is choice. A full diary built from whoever happened to get through is a different thing from a full diary you selected. And no clinic stays fully booked forever.
Fix one of five · nothing to buy
This is one of the five fixes from the session, in full, with nothing held back. It needs no technology and you can start it this afternoon. Most people who reach a voicemail have no idea when, or whether, anyone will ring back, so they try the next clinic on the list. Take that doubt away and a good number of them will wait for you.
Live webinar for Hands On Money members
What an unanswered phone costs a hands on practice, and five fixes that cost nothing. Wednesday 7 October, 12:15, 45 minutes.
Leave with one number, what your phone cost you last month, and five things you can change this afternoon without buying anything.
This is not a software demo. Thirty five of the forty five minutes cannot be sold to you, because the fixes need nothing but your diary. The last part is recorded and the replay goes in the group, though the Q&A only happens once, and a recording cannot answer your question.