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Patient Attrition Cost Calculator
What do the patients who quietly stop coming back cost you each year — including the ones you paid to acquire?
Patients rarely leave loudly. They miss a recall, then another, and a year later they are someone else's patient. A practice that replaces them with paid marketing pays twice: once for the patient who left, and again for the new one — who, often enough, does not come back after the first visit either.
This calculator puts a number on both: the production that walks out with the patients who drift away, and the acquisition spend wasted on new patients who never return.
The numbers already filled in belong to an example practice — $1,150,000 in annual collections · 2,000 active patients · 22% of them lost in a year · 25 new patients a month · 43% of new patients who do not return · $225 to acquire each new patient. They are there so you can see the calculator work before you type anything; they are not benchmarks. Replace them with your own.
Everything is calculated in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to us or stored.
Your attrition, in dollars
Change any number and press Calculate. Reset brings the example practice back.
What attrition is costing you
| Average value of a patient each year | |
| Patients lost each year | |
| Production that leaves with them | |
| New patients who do not come back | |
| Acquisition spend wasted on them | |
| Total attrition cost each year | |
| Each day | |
| Over five years, at today's numbers | |
| For reference: what you spend acquiring new patients each year — not added to the total |
Replace them with patients who already trust you
Patient Pipeline finds your promoters at checkout and asks them for referrals and reviews, every month, automatically. Free for your first hundred days, with the other six tools.
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What fixes this
Patient Pipeline, Step 1, turns the patients who stay into the source of the ones you need: a two-question survey at checkout finds your promoters, and the referral and review requests go out to them automatically, every month — new patients at no acquisition cost, from people who already trust you.
In the first practice on Profit Smiles, monthly referrals went from 10 to 21 in the first ninety days, at no acquisition cost.
Results shown are from one practice following this protocol. Individual results may vary.
How this is calculated
- Average value per patient = annual collections ÷ active patients.
- Patients lost = active patients × the attrition rate; lost production = patients lost × average value per patient.
- New patients who do not return = new patients a month × 12 × the non-return share; wasted acquisition cost = that number × the cost to acquire one.
- Total attrition cost = lost production + wasted acquisition cost. The full annual acquisition spend is shown for reference only — it is not added to the total.
- The attrition, non-return and acquisition-cost defaults are the example practice's own numbers, not industry figures. Replace them with yours.
- Daily figures divide the annual figure by 365. The five-year line multiplies by five at today's numbers — no growth, no inflation, no change assumed.
This is arithmetic on the numbers you enter — an estimate, not a forecast, and not advice about your practice.
The other calculators: PPO write-offs · Out-of-network break-even · Treatment acceptance · Membership plan revenue · Supply costs — or all of them.
See the same numbers on your own dashboard — free for a hundred days.
The protocol records your practice's baseline on day one, and every tool shows its dollar impact against it. No credit card, nothing to cancel.
Start the 100 Day Protocol FreeFree for 100 days · No credit card · Built by a practicing dentist