Recover Lost Patients.
Automatically.

Every dental practice loses patients. People move, change routines, or simply let their next check-up slip until it becomes a year, then two. Industry data consistently shows that 10–15% of a practice’s registered patient list is lapsed at any given time — defined as patients who were previously active but haven’t attended in 12 months or more. For a practice carrying 6,000 patients on its books, that translates to 600–900 people who once trusted you with their care and have quietly stopped returning.

The financial impact is substantial. An average check-up and hygiene visit generates roughly £80 in revenue. Many lapsed patients also had treatment plans in progress — crowns, whitening, orthodontic reviews — representing hundreds of pounds per patient in deferred work. Multiply that across several hundred lapsed patients and the practice is leaving tens of thousands of pounds on the table every year, often without realising the true scale.

Most practices recognise the problem and ask their reception team to work through lapsed lists. In practice, this means 3–5 hours every month spent manually dialling numbers, navigating voicemails, and logging callbacks — squeezed into gaps between greeting patients, handling emergencies, and managing the day’s schedule. Reach rates are poor: many calls go unanswered, voicemails are rarely returned, and the task inevitably slips down the priority list when the waiting room fills up. The result is an inconsistent, low-yield effort that barely scratches the surface of the lapsed list.

Meanwhile, the list keeps growing. Every month, a fresh cohort of patients crosses the 12-month threshold. Without a systematic, persistent approach, the gap between the patients you have and the patients you could have widens steadily — and so does the revenue shortfall.

Westwood.AI’s lapsed patient recovery service replaces the manual recall treadmill with a fully automated, AI-driven system. It works by identifying patients who haven’t attended within your chosen window, then reaching out with a warm, conversational phone call — not a robotic message or a generic text, but a natural-sounding voice that knows the patient’s name, their practice, and how to guide them toward rebooking.

The system calls at optimised times, handles the full conversation, manages objections and questions, and feeds confirmed rebookings straight back into your workflow. If a patient wants a specific day or has a question your team should answer, the system flags it for follow-up. Your reception staff don’t make a single call, print a single list, or chase a single callback. The lapsed list is worked systematically, persistently, every single month — without fail.

Because the service integrates directly with Dentally, it pulls lapsed patient data automatically and syncs outcomes in real time. There’s no manual data entry, no spreadsheet exports, and no disruption to your existing processes. It simply runs in the background, recovering patients and revenue that would otherwise be lost.

Getting started is straightforward and designed to cause zero disruption to your practice. We handle the technical setup end to end — your involvement is limited to a short discovery conversation and a green light to go live. Here’s how the four-week onboarding works:

We believe the ROI case should be honest and complete, so here is the full cost picture alongside projected returns. There are no hidden fees. The service comprises a one-off setup cost, a fixed monthly retainer, and a small per-call charge that covers telephony. Against that, even conservative recovery assumptions produce a clear and compounding return.

Even at the conservative end — recovering just 15% patients called per month — the service pays for itself with a clear surplus. At the higher end, you’re looking at nearly £500 of net monthly revenue after all costs. Over 12 months, cumulative recovered revenue reaches £5,760–£9,600, against a total annual cost of approximately £2,540 (including setup). That’s a first-year return of 1.3–2.2×, improving in year two when there is no setup cost.

Crucially, these numbers only capture the immediate rebooking revenue. A patient who returns for a check-up today is likely to book hygiene appointments, accept treatment plans, and remain active for years. The projected customer lifetime value of a recovered patient — factoring in 2–3 visits per year at £80–£150 each — is £500–£1,500+ over 3–5 years. Recovering 6–10 patients per month means the practice is adding £36,000–£180,000 in lifetime revenue annually, far exceeding the modest cost of the service.

Every practice is different. Use the sliders below to enter your own numbers and see a personalised estimate of the time savings, revenue recovery, and ROI you could expect. The calculations update instantly as you adjust.

The table below summarises the practical differences between the traditional approach — relying on your reception team to work through lapsed lists when they can — and a fully automated system that runs in the background every month without fail.