Understanding Patient Engagement Scores

Retention Is Cheaper Than Acquisition

A dental clinic's revenue mostly comes from patients it already has — recalls, continuing treatment, families that follow. The engagement system exists to make "who is quietly drifting away?" a number you can see instead of a feeling you get too late. Every patient carries a score out of 100, recalculated nightly from visit recency, frequency, no-shows, and responsiveness, and the score drives badges, insights, and win-back automation.

The Two Tiers You'll See

• On the patient profile: the engagement ring plus a tier badge — Champion, Engaged, At Risk, or Disengaged (new patients start Unscored until there's history to score).
• On the patients list: a simpler visit-count tier next to each name — New (0 visits), Starter (1–2), Regular (3–5), Loyal (6+) — a quick read on depth of relationship while you scroll.

The profile tier is the one that predicts behavior; the list tier is the one that summarizes history.

Where the Score Works for You

• Devy insight cards surface engagement problems while they're still cheap to fix: patients at churn risk, an overdue-recall spike, or "engagement champions" worth a referral nudge. Every card links to the affected patient list.
• Lapsed patients — patients disengaged with no visit in 6+ months surface on the "Patients ready for reactivation" insight and in the Patients page's Overdue for recall (6+ months) filter. There's no automated win-back drip yet — reach them the same way as any overdue recall: one tap per patient from Reminders > Follow-ups Due.
• Recalls — procedures recorded with a recall date feed Reminders > Follow-ups Due, where a single tap sends the recall SMS. Recalls are the single strongest engagement lever a clinic controls.

Moving the Number

The levers, in order of impact:

1. Phone numbers on file. Every automated touch — reminder, recall, win-back — requires one. A missing mobile number silently exempts the patient from everything below.
2. Reminders on. 24h/48h reminders plus the morning-of confirmation demonstrably cut no-shows, and kept appointments are the raw material of engagement.
3. Same-day no-show follow-up. A quick manual SMS ("We missed you today — reply to rebook") from Reminders > Send SMS while the miss is fresh converts far better than silence.
4. Recall dates on every procedure that deserves one. The follow-up list only knows what you tell it.

Do those four consistently and the nightly recalculation takes care of the scoreboard.