Presented, and what happened next
Case acceptance compares the treatment patients agreed to with the treatment you presented. This page calculates it two ways — by dollar value and by number of treatment plans — explains why the two differ, and separates accepted treatment from scheduled and completed treatment. CORAL publishes no ideal, average or recommended acceptance percentage.
Start here
One definition, and the two questions it is usually asked to answer.
Case acceptance — also called treatment acceptance or treatment plan acceptance — is the share of the treatment you presented that the patient agreed to proceed with. It describes the distance between diagnosis and a decision.
It is not a measure of how good the dentistry is, and it is not production. It describes one specific moment: treatment was presented with a cost, and the patient either went ahead or did not.
Because the figure depends entirely on what you count as presented and what you count as accepted, it is far more useful as a movement over time inside one practice than as a number compared between practices.
By dollars. Treatment value accepted ÷ treatment value presented × 100. This weights every plan by its size.
By case count. Treatment plans accepted ÷ treatment plans presented × 100. This treats every plan as one unit, whatever it is worth.
Both figures must be drawn from the same measurement period and the same reporting basis. The calculator below produces each one separately and never combines or averages them, because they answer different questions.
Two methods
The same period can produce two very different rates. Neither is wrong; they measure different things.
Divides accepted dollars by presented dollars. It reflects the financial weight of what was accepted, which is what eventually shows up in production. Its weakness is sensitivity: in a small period, one large plan accepted or declined dominates the result.
Divides accepted plans by presented plans. It is steadier and describes how often patients say yes, but it treats a small restorative plan and a full-arch plan as equivalent, so a practice can look consistent while its largest cases are not proceeding.
Read them side by side. When case-based acceptance is much higher than dollar-based acceptance, larger plans are usually the ones not proceeding — a different conversation from patients declining treatment generally.
Four different words
These are separate stages. Software reports sometimes use the words interchangeably, which is where most confusion about acceptance figures begins.
On this page, accepted means the patient agreed to proceed and a financial arrangement was established. The calculator measures presentation to acceptance only. It does not calculate scheduled or completed treatment, and does not assume that accepted treatment was scheduled.
Free, ungated, nothing stored
Enter whichever figures you have. Each rate appears once its own two inputs are present and reads Not Calculated when they are not. Nothing is scored and nothing is compared to a benchmark.
Every field is optional, and everything stays in your browser — nothing you type is sent anywhere or stored. Choose whichever measurement period you use, as long as both figures in a pair come from that same period and the same report.
Contextual only. The period you choose never affects the calculation — it only reminds you that both figures in a pair must come from the same period.
The total dollar value of treatment presented to patients in your measurement period.
The dollar value of that presented treatment the patients agreed to proceed with, where a financial arrangement was established.
The number of treatment plans presented in the same period.
The number of those plans the patients agreed to proceed with, where a financial arrangement was established.
Dollar-based case acceptance rate
Not Calculated
Treatment value accepted ÷ treatment value presented. Both figures must cover the same month, on the same reporting basis.
Treatment value not accepted
Not Calculated
Presented dollars minus accepted dollars, as entered.
Unaccepted share of presented value
Not Calculated
The remainder of the dollar-based rate.
Case-based case acceptance rate
Not Calculated
Treatment plans accepted ÷ treatment plans presented. Both figures must cover the same month, on the same reporting basis.
Treatment plans not accepted
Not Calculated
Presented plans minus accepted plans, as entered.
Unaccepted share of presented plans
Not Calculated
The remainder of the case-based rate.
The two rates are reported separately and are never averaged or combined. Nothing is inferred: dollar figures never estimate case counts, and case counts never estimate dollars. If a presented figure is blank or zero, its rate reads Not Calculated rather than 0%.
Worked example
A deliberately ordinary set of figures, showing why the two methods separate.
Same practice, same month, ten percentage points apart. Most patients said yes, and the plans that did not proceed were the larger ones. A single headline acceptance number would have hidden that entirely. You can load these figures into the calculator above with one click.
Read with care
The arithmetic is simple. What goes into it rarely is.
One practice counts every written plan with a cost. Another counts only comprehensive plans presented in a dedicated consultation. Both are defensible. Comparing them, or switching between them between months, is not.
If a large plan is presented, partially accepted, re-presented in phases and each phase counted separately, the same treatment enters the denominator repeatedly and the rate falls without anything getting worse.
Recommendations made verbally at the chair and never entered are invisible to the calculation. A practice that documents everything can show a lower acceptance rate than one that documents only easy cases.
A single high-value plan accepted or declined can move a dollar-based rate by tens of percentage points in a small period, with no change in how the team presented anything.
A week or a slow month contains too few plans for the arithmetic to describe anything stable. Longer, consistent periods move less for reasons that have nothing to do with the practice.
Software reports often label these interchangeably. If your acceptance figure quietly counts scheduled treatment, it will not match a figure that counts agreement at the time of presentation.
How large cases distort dollar-based acceptance is worth stating plainly: in a month with forty plans, one $30,000 plan can be more than a sixth of the entire denominator. Whether that patient proceeds is one decision, not a pattern — which is why the case-based rate and a longer period both belong next to the dollar figure.
How it connects
Acceptance is early. Production and collections come later, and by different routes.
Accepted treatment becomes production only when it is completed, and money only when it is paid for. A rise in acceptance this month may appear in production next month and in collections after that. That lag is normal, and it is why acceptance cannot be read as a financial result on its own.
Production, collections, collection rate and production per day sit among the broader dental practice performance metrics; this page is the deeper resource for acceptance alone.
Once treatment is completed and billed, what you are owed and have not yet received is a separate question again, answered by your accounts receivable aging report. What is left after expenses is answered by the profitability calculator, with the categories set out in the overhead guide.
When the patient being presented to is a new patient, what that patient cost to acquire and what they returned in production and collections is calculated by CORAL’s dental new patient value and acquisition cost calculator.
A repeatable routine
These steps are descriptive: none of them sets a target or grades a result.
Write down your definition of presented and accepted
One paragraph, agreed by whoever pulls the numbers. Everything else depends on it.
Pull both figures from the same period and the same report
Mixing a dollar figure from one report with a case count from another produces two rates that cannot be read together.
Read the dollar-based and case-based rates side by side
When they differ widely, the difference is usually about case size rather than about the conversation.
Look at the unaccepted amount, not only the percentage
The dollar value not accepted is a concrete list of patients and plans, which a percentage is not.
Separate never-accepted from accepted-but-unscheduled
These need different follow-up. One is a presentation and financial conversation question; the other is a scheduling question.
Use a long enough period to be stable
Many practices use a rolling quarter alongside the current month for exactly this reason.
Record what you changed between periods
Movement is only interpretable if you know what was different.
The calculator above reports practice-level figures. Splitting acceptance further can be informative, and can also mislead. CORAL does not calculate these today, and does not imply them from a single number.
The most honest response to large-case distortion: acceptance on small, medium and large plans usually behaves very differently and averaging them hides both.
Needs: Presented and accepted figures split by the value bands you choose.
Useful when providers present genuinely comparable treatment. Specialist and hygiene case mixes make cross-provider comparison misleading rather than informative.
Needs: Presented and accepted figures per provider, for the same period.
Can show where the financial conversation is consistent. It can also turn a shared outcome into individual blame, since the coordinator does not choose the case mix.
Needs: Presented and accepted figures per coordinator, plus agreement on who owns which plan.
Next steps
A percentage describes an outcome. The systems behind it are where it moves.
The free Reef Health diagnostic reads how treatment is presented, who owns the financial conversation, and how diagnosed-but-unscheduled treatment is worked — the systems that sit behind an acceptance rate rather than the rate itself.
Ask CORAL AI answers practice questions in context, and CORAL Team Bonus System connects a team bonus to the practice’s own monthly figures. Plans are on CORAL pricing.
Prefer to walk through your own figures with someone? Book a Practice Intelligence Session.
Questions owners ask
Divide accepted treatment by presented treatment for the same period and multiply by 100. There are two versions of that calculation: dollar-based acceptance divides the dollar value of accepted treatment by the dollar value of treatment presented, and case-based acceptance divides the number of treatment plans accepted by the number presented. The calculator on this page produces both, separately, from figures you enter.
Dollar-based acceptance weights every plan by its value, so a single large case can move it substantially. Case-based acceptance treats every plan as one unit, so a $400 filling and a $30,000 full-arch plan count the same. They answer different questions and can differ widely in the same period, which is why this page reports them separately and never averages them together.
No. Accepted means the patient agreed to proceed and a financial arrangement was established. Scheduled means an appointment exists on the books, and completed means the treatment was performed and became production. Treatment can be accepted and never scheduled, which is what practices usually call diagnosed-but-unscheduled treatment. Because software reports sometimes use these words interchangeably, it is worth confirming which one your report is actually counting before comparing periods.
Most practices count treatment that has been diagnosed and shown to the patient with a cost, normally in writing. What is included is a decision you have to make and record: comprehensive plans only or every recommendation, phased plans as one plan or several, and whether a verbal recommendation that was never entered counts at all. Any consistent definition works for tracking movement over time. An inconsistent one makes the figure uninterpretable.
Practice-management systems differ on what they treat as presented, whether they count accepted or scheduled treatment, how they handle phased and re-presented plans, and what date they attribute a plan to. Two correct reports from the same ledger can therefore produce different rates. This calculator uses only the figures you supply, so the result reflects your own definitions rather than a vendor's.
Arithmetically, yes: use that person's presented and accepted figures for the same period. Interpretation is the harder part, because case mix, specialty, patient type and who happened to be scheduled that month all affect the result. This calculator currently reports practice-level figures; segmentation by provider, coordinator or treatment-value band is described on this page as a possible future addition rather than something CORAL implies from a single number.
Accepted treatment becomes production only when it is completed, and becomes collections only when it is paid for. Acceptance is therefore an early indicator: it can rise this month and appear in production next month and in collections after that. Collection rate and production per day are defined on CORAL's dental practice KPI reference, and what remains after expenses is covered by the profitability calculator.
CORAL does not publish an ideal, average, healthy or target case acceptance percentage. Published figures vary enormously because practices define presented and accepted treatment differently, and a rate that is high for one case mix would be unremarkable for another. This page explains what the figures measure, what moves them, and where they mislead, so you can read your own numbers over time rather than compare them with someone else's practice.
CORAL publishes no case acceptance benchmark, ideal range or industry average, and makes no income guarantees. CORAL provides practice-management information and planning tools; it does not provide clinical, legal, tax, payroll or accounting advice. Financial decisions should be reviewed with your accountant, bookkeeper or other appropriate adviser.
