Dental practices
How to work your unscheduled treatment report
Nearly every practice can print this report and almost none work it line by line. The report is not the problem. The absence of an owner, a cadence and a written record of who was called is the problem.
This page is the whole process. You can run it from a blank spreadsheet — the paid workbook exists to save you the two hours of building it, not to gatekeep the method.
Step 1 — Pull twelve months, not everything
Pull unscheduled or planned treatment for the last twelve months. Older than that and you are calling people about a diagnosis they do not remember, from a clinical picture that has since changed.
Export it to a spreadsheet. Do not try to work it inside your practice management system — you need columns your system does not give you, specifically last contact date and next contact date.
- Dentrix: Office Manager → Reports → Lists → Treatment Plan Report
- Eaglesoft: Reports → Practice Analysis → Unscheduled Treatment Plans
- Open Dental: Reports → Lists → Treatment Finder, filtered to planned and not scheduled
- Curve Dental: Reports → Production → Unscheduled Treatment
- Denticon: Reports → Treatment Plan → Unscheduled Treatment Plans
Step 2 — Strip out what you cannot work
Remove patients who have moved, are deceased, are flagged do-not-contact, or have transferred to another practice. The remaining total is your workable list, and it is the only number worth reporting.
Do not skip this. A list padded with unworkable rows makes the weekly numbers meaningless and quietly demoralises whoever is making the calls.
Step 3 — Prioritise by value and by expiring benefits
Sort by case value, largest first. The top fifth of the list by value is where most of the recoverable money sits, and it is where a limited number of calls should go first.
Then override that with anything where insurance benefits expire within sixty days. Expiring benefits give you a real, honest reason to call today — no manufactured urgency required.
Step 4 — Give the list one owner
One named person. Not the front desk collectively. Not whoever has a gap. A named owner with a named backup, and the calling sessions blocked in the actual schedule as recurring appointments.
This is the step that decides whether the system is still running in six weeks. Everything else is mechanics.
Step 5 — Run a five-touch cadence and then stop
Call, then call again two days later, then text at five days, then email at nine, then a final call at sixteen. Then park it for the quarter.
Five touches, then stop. A sixth attempt in the same cycle does not recover the case and it does damage a patient relationship you will want later.
Log every touch. A cadence with no written record is not a cadence — it is a group of people each assuming someone else called.
Step 6 — Report four numbers every Monday
Dormant dollars, dollars contacted this week, dollars scheduled this week, dollars completed this week. Ninety seconds in the Monday huddle.
If dollars scheduled is zero two weeks running, the cadence is not being run or the owner does not have the time you promised them. Both are fixable in week two and nearly unfixable in month three.
Common questions
How far back should the report go?
Twelve months. Beyond that the clinical picture has usually changed enough that you should re-examine before you re-present.
How many calls per session is realistic?
Twelve to twenty dials, producing maybe five or six real conversations. Anyone promising far more is counting unanswered dials.
Should the doctor make these calls?
Usually no. A trained coordinator with a script and a logged cadence outperforms sporadic doctor calls, because consistency beats authority on this particular list.