Spent the last few years building booking/reminder systems for GPs, dentists, and med spas. One pattern shows up in almost every practice before we touch anything:

The leak isn't acquisition. It's the six-month silence.

A patient comes in, has a great visit, and then... nothing. No reminder for their next cleaning, no recall for their annual physical, no nudge for a follow-up treatment. Six months later they've either forgotten or found someone else who texted them first.

Three numbers worth checking in your own practice:

• No-show rate — if it's above 8-10%, your reminder system isn't doing its job (a single SMS 24h out fixes most of this)

• Recall rate at 6 months — most practices we look at recover under 20% of patients who are "due" for a follow-up, without ever manually calling them

• Review velocity — practices that ask for a Google review right after a good visit (not a generic email blast later) see 3-5x more reviews land

None of this requires more front-desk staff. It requires the follow-up to happen automatically, at the right moment, without anyone remembering to do it.

If you run a practice and want to see where your own leak is, happy to talk shop in the comments.