Case Acceptance. Call Conversion. Attrition. The KPIs That Tell the Truth About Your Business. 

Let’s get something straight: If you’re not tracking your KPIs, you don’t really know what’s happening in your practice.

You might feel busy. You might think things are “okay.” But without hard data, you’re operating on assumptions. And assumptions are dangerous.

That’s why, at MGE, we hammer this point home:

Your business lives and dies by Key Performance Indicators — KPIs.

They’re not just numbers. They’re how you find out what’s working, what’s failing, and where to focus your energy.

Now, there are dozens of KPIs you can track. But over and over again, we’ve found that there are three that tell the real story behind a practice’s growth — or lack of it.

Here they are — and why each one matters more than most dentists realize:

1. Case Acceptance Percentage – Are You Converting What You Present?

Most dentists think they have a case acceptance problem — but they’ve never actually looked at the numbers.

So let’s define it:

Case Acceptance % = Dollar Value of Treatment Accepted ÷ Dollar Value of Treatment Presented

If you presented $100,000 in treatment this month, but only $45,000 was accepted, you’ve got a 45% case acceptance rate. That means you’re walking away from more than half of your opportunity. That’s a massive leak — and it’s happening in practices all over the country.

Now ask yourself:

• Are you even tracking this number weekly or monthly?
• Does your treatment coordinator know it?
• Is your front desk aware of it?
• Are you measuring by dollar amount or procedure count? (Hint: Use dollars.)

And here’s where it gets worse. In most practices, you’ve got one person doing the presenting — but five people guessing why the patient didn’t move forward.
“It was too expensive.”
“They want to wait.”
“They said they’ll call back.”

That’s not case acceptance. That’s lost revenue dressed up in polite excuses.

When you start tracking this stat, you get visibility. You see patterns. You realize where training is needed — whether it’s better financial arrangements, improving communication, or simply slowing down to help patients make a decision.

If your collections are flatlined, this number is one of the first places to look.

2. Call Conversion Percentage – Are You Wasting Your Marketing Dollars?

Every dentist wants more new patients. So they hire a marketing company, run Facebook ads, or pay for Google clicks — and the phone rings.

But here’s the kicker:

How many of those inbound new patient calls are actually turning into scheduled appointments?

That’s your Call Conversion %. And in most offices, it’s way lower than the doctor thinks.

You might be getting 100 new patient calls a month… but only booking 20 appointments. That’s an 80% loss rate. In other words, you’re spending money to make the phone ring, and then blowing the opportunity when it actually happens.

Most front desks aren’t trained in sales, communication, or how to control the call. They’re busy, distracted, or under the false idea that their job is to “answer the phone” — when it should be to book the patient.

This is not a “front desk problem.” It’s a lack-of-training-and-tracking problem.

Ask yourself:

• Do you know how many new patient calls you get each week?
• Do you know how many of them convert to booked appointments?
• Do you review call recordings?
• Are you tracking this KPI weekly?

Because here’s the thing — if you fixed just this one number, you could double your new patients without spending another dime on marketing.

Most practices don’t need more leads. They need to stop wasting the ones they’re already getting.

3. Attrition Rate – Patients Are Slipping Away, and Most Dentists Have No Idea

This is the silent killer in most practices.

Your team is busy. Hygiene looks booked. You’re grinding. But collections are flat, new patients aren’t turning into long-term patients, and you’re wondering why growth feels stuck.

It’s because your patient base is shrinking — and no one’s looking at it.

Patients are quietly falling off the schedule. They’re not calling to cancel. They’re not transferring records. They’re just… gone.

And unless someone is tracking it, you don’t know how bad it is — until it’s too late.

Here’s how to find your attrition rate:

Run a list of every patient who has been in the office over the last 18 months. Then check how many of them have an appointment scheduled past today’s date.

If they don’t have a future appointment — they’re either lost to the practice, or they’ve become a reactivation case.

That’s it. Simple. But powerful.

And most offices aren’t doing it. There’s no one assigned to it. No system to catch it.
So you lose people. A few a day. A few dozen a month. Hundreds over the year.

You feel busy… but you’re constantly having to replace the ones who slipped away.

Here are real examples:

• A family misses a recall — no one follows up — gone.
• A patient finishes treatment — no one schedules hygiene — gone.
• A patient calls to “think about it” — no one checks back — gone.

It’s slow. It’s silent. And it’s killing your growth.

This stat doesn’t lie. Once you run it, you’ll know if your base is growing or eroding. And once you know that, you can take action — assign someone to reactivation, tighten recall, and keep your schedule filled with patients who already know and trust you.

Let’s recap.

• Case Acceptance % tells you whether the treatment you’re recommending is being accepted — and if your team is doing their job effectively.
• Call Conversion % tells you if your marketing dollars are actually resulting in patients walking through your doors.
• Attrition Rate tells you if you’re keeping the patients you worked so hard to get in the first place.

If even one of these numbers is off — your practice is bleeding revenue. You might still be collecting. You might still feel busy. But you’re capping your growth without realizing it.

You cannot afford to guess anymore.

Here’s the Good News

You don’t have to be a statistician. You don’t need to build complicated dashboards.
You just need to know what to track, how to track it, and what to do with the data once you have it.

That’s what we teach at MGE.

We help dentists go from blind decision-making to strategic growth.
From “I think” to “I know.”
From busy and stressed… to productive and profitable.

You can do this. It starts with these three numbers.

If you have any questions or need any help, feel free to email me at jeffs@mgeonline.com