Spend, patients, production, collections
What did a new patient cost you, and what did that patient return inside the window you are measuring? This page calculates both from your own figures. CORAL publishes no ideal acquisition cost, no average patient value, no marketing percentage and no lifetime value estimate.
Start here
Two questions that are usually asked as one: what acquiring a patient cost, and what that patient returned inside a window you chose.
There is no single answer, because value depends entirely on the window you measure. A new patient measured on the day of the first visit is worth an exam, radiographs and a prophylaxis. The same patient measured over a year may be worth a full course of restorative treatment.
On this page, value means production or collections attributed to new patients within the window you state, divided by the number of new patients in that window. That is a figure your own reports can support and compare with other patient-side dental KPIs.
It is deliberately not called lifetime value. A lifetime figure needs years of retention and treatment history per patient cohort. Multiplying one window by an assumed number of years produces an authoritative-looking number that is mostly assumption, and CORAL does not publish one.
Cost per marketing-attributed new patient. Marketing or acquisition spend ÷ the new patients you attribute to that spend.
Cost per new patient overall. The same spend ÷ every new patient in the period, referrals included.
Production per new patient. Production attributed to new patients ÷ new patients.
Collections per new patient. Collections attributed to new patients ÷ new patients.
Simple Marketing Return. (Attributed collections − marketing spend) ÷ marketing spend. A spend-to-collections comparison — not profit, and not a lifetime return.
Four definitions
Most disagreements about a new-patient figure are disagreements about one of these four definitions.
Write your four definitions down once and reuse them every period. A cost or value figure that moves because the definitions changed describes the spreadsheet, not the practice.
Free, ungated, nothing stored
Enter whichever figures you have. Each result appears once its own 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 window you measure, as long as every figure comes from that same window and the same reports.
Contextual only. The window you choose never affects the calculation — it only reminds you that the figures must come from the same window.
What you paid to attract new patients in the period — advertising, agency fees, campaign costs. Include only what you count as acquisition spend, and count it the same way every period.
Every patient seen for the first time in the period, including referrals and insurance directory arrivals. Your software reports this; your own definition of a new patient decides what it contains.
Only the new patients you can reasonably trace to the spend above. If you cannot separate them, leave this blank rather than guessing.
Treatment delivered to new patients within the window you are measuring. Production is work performed, not money received.
Money actually received from new patients within the same window. Insurance payments arriving later fall outside a short window.
Cost per marketing-attributed new patient
Not Calculated
Marketing or acquisition spend ÷ attributed new patients. All figures must cover the same month, on the same reporting basis.
Cost per new patient overall
Not Calculated
The same spend ÷ every new patient, referrals included. A different question from the figure above, and never averaged with it.
Production per new patient
Not Calculated
Production attributed to new patients ÷ new patients. Production is treatment delivered, not money received.
Collections per new patient
Not Calculated
Collections attributed to new patients ÷ new patients. Money actually received inside your window; later insurance payments fall outside it.
Simple Marketing Return
Not Calculated
(Attributed collections − marketing spend) ÷ marketing spend. A spend-to-collections comparison only: it is not profit, not a return on investment and not a lifetime figure, because nothing has been subtracted for the clinical time, laboratory work, supplies, labor or overhead needed to deliver that treatment. Negative results are shown as the arithmetic produces them.
Attributed collections minus spend
Not Calculated
The same comparison in dollars rather than as a percentage. Also not profit, for the same reason.
The results above are reported separately and are never averaged or combined. Nothing is inferred: a blank field is unknown rather than zero, and if a denominator is blank or zero its result reads Not Calculated rather than 0%. No lifetime value is estimated anywhere on this page.
Every figure here describes the window you chose. A one-month window will usually show production above collections and can show a negative return, because treatment and insurance payments arrive later than the spend that produced them.
Worked example
Deliberately ordinary figures, chosen to show how differently the same month reads in production and in collections.
The two cost figures differ by $100 per patient purely because 16 of the 40 new patients were not attributed to the spend. Production per patient is nearly double collections per patient, which is the honest signature of a one-month window: treatment has been delivered and not yet paid for. And 800.0% is not 800% profit — delivering $96,000 of treatment costs clinical time, laboratory work, supplies and labor, none of which appears in that percentage. You can load these figures into the calculator above with one click.
How it connects
New-patient value sits between four measurements CORAL already calculates elsewhere.
How many new patients you saw is a counted figure rather than a calculated one. This page is the deeper resource for what those patients cost and returned.
Whether treatment presented to a new patient was accepted is a separate measurement, calculated on the dental case acceptance calculator. Whether the patient came back for continuing care is answered by the recall rate calculator, and whether the hygiene schedule has room for them is answered by the hygiene capacity calculator.
Attributed collections that have been earned but not yet received sit on your aging report, explained in the dental accounts receivable guide. What is left after every expense — marketing among them — is calculated by the profitability calculator, with marketing’s place among the categories set out in the overhead guide.
A repeatable routine
These steps are descriptive: none of them sets a target or grades a result.
Write down your definition of a new patient
Then use the same report and the same filter every period.
Decide what counts as acquisition spend
Advertising and agency fees at minimum. If you include team time or discounted exams, include them consistently.
State your attribution window before you pull figures
A month, a quarter, a year, or a fixed number of days after the first visit. The window belongs in your notes, not in the arithmetic.
Separate attributed patients from all new patients
If your software cannot separate them, leave the attributed field blank and read the overall cost figure only.
Read production and collections side by side
The gap between them is the lag: treatment delivered but not yet paid, plus write-offs and adjustments.
Compare periods, not benchmarks
Your own figures over several consistent periods say more than any published average, and CORAL publishes none.
Dividing paid advertising spend by every new patient — referrals included — makes acquisition look cheaper than the advertising actually was. The two cost figures on this page keep those populations apart on purpose.
Production is treatment delivered. It becomes cash only when it is paid for, at whatever rate the payer allows. A production-per-new-patient figure will almost always look larger than the collections figure beside it.
Treatment delivered in the last weeks of a month is frequently paid in the next one. Measured over a single month, collections attributed to new patients understate what those patients will ultimately pay.
A new patient may accept a large plan and receive it across several months. The value of that patient appears gradually, so early windows can look poor for reasons that have nothing to do with marketing.
Word of mouth follows good clinical care and a good front desk, not a campaign. When referrals are counted as attributed, the campaign takes credit for work the practice did.
Team time, new-patient phone handling, discounted exams and free consultations are also costs of acquiring patients. If you exclude them, say so, and exclude them the same way every period.
Simple Marketing Return subtracts marketing spend from collections and nothing else. Delivering that treatment costs clinical time, laboratory work, supplies and labor, none of which is in the figure.
Each figure unlocks specific results. Anything you cannot supply simply reads Not Calculated.
Marketing or acquisition spend in the period
Both cost-per-patient figures, Simple Marketing Return and the net difference.
New patients in the period, all sources
Cost per new patient overall, and production and collections per new patient.
New patients attributed to that spend
Cost per marketing-attributed new patient.
Production attributed to new patients
Production per new patient.
Collections attributed to new patients
Collections per new patient, Simple Marketing Return and the net difference.
The calculator above reports practice-level figures. Splitting them further can be informative, and can also mislead. CORAL does not calculate these today, and does not imply them from a single number.
Shows which channel the attributed patients came from. Attribution gets harder, not easier, as channels multiply, and patients often touch several before calling.
Needs: Spend and attributed new patients per channel, for the same window.
A twelve-month window captures treatment and insurance payments a one-month window misses. It is closer to what a patient is worth, and still not lifetime value.
Needs: Production and collections tracked per acquisition cohort over time, which most practices do not report by default.
Separating referral arrivals from paid arrivals stops one from flattering the other. It also makes clear how much of growth is reputation rather than spend.
Needs: A reliable referral source field completed at the first visit.
Next steps
A cost per patient describes the month. The systems around it are where it moves.
The free Reef Health diagnostic reads how new patients are placed in the schedule, how the financial conversation is handled and whether treatment is scheduled before the patient leaves — the systems that sit behind a new-patient figure rather than the figure itself.
Ask CORAL AI answers practice questions in context, including why one of your numbers changed. Plans are on CORAL pricing.
Prefer to walk through your own figures with someone? Book a Practice Intelligence Session.
Questions owners ask
Divide the marketing or acquisition spend for a period by the new patients you attribute to that spend. This page also reports spend divided by every new patient, including referrals, because the two answer different questions: one describes what the campaign cost per patient it produced, the other describes what you spent per new patient overall.
That is your decision, and practices genuinely differ. Emergency-only visits and patients returning after several years are the common disagreements. CORAL does not impose a definition; it asks you to keep yours the same every period so the figures stay comparable.
Both, for different purposes. Cost per attributed patient tells you what the spend produced. Cost per new patient overall tells you what you spent for the growth you actually got, referrals included. Averaging the two would hide the difference, so this page never combines them.
It is the arithmetic most people mean by marketing ROI: attributed collections minus marketing spend, divided by marketing spend. It is not profit. Nothing has been subtracted for the clinical time, laboratory work, supplies, team labor or overhead needed to deliver that treatment, so a large percentage does not mean a large amount of money kept.
Both are reported here, separately. Production is treatment delivered and is usually the larger figure. Collections is money received and is the one that pays wages. The gap between them within a window is mostly timing — treatment billed but not yet paid — plus adjustments and write-offs.
Because the inputs on this page cannot support it. A genuine lifetime figure needs years of retention, recall and treatment history per patient cohort. Multiplying one window's value by an assumed number of years produces a number that looks authoritative and is mostly assumption, so CORAL does not publish one.
CORAL does not publish an ideal, average or target acquisition cost, an ideal marketing percentage of collections, an average patient value or a target return. What a patient costs to acquire depends on your market, your fees, your case mix and what you count as spend. This page explains what the figures measure so you can read your own numbers across consistent periods.
CORAL publishes no acquisition cost benchmark, ideal marketing percentage, average patient value, lifetime value estimate, target return 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 and marketing decisions should be reviewed with your accountant, bookkeeper or other appropriate adviser.
