Due, booked, seen, overdue
Recall — recare, continuing care — is the process that brings existing patients back for hygiene. This page calculates reappointment, kept visits, overdue share and how many hygiene visits your own schedule could actually recover. CORAL publishes no ideal, average or recommended recall percentage, and never presents an overdue list as lost revenue.
Start here
One process, four separate figures, and words that practices use interchangeably.
The three words describe the same thing: the system that brings an existing patient back for hygiene at the interval recorded against them. Software vendors and consultants use whichever term they prefer, and none of them means anything different.
What varies enormously is the measurement. A recall interval is a setting. An overdue threshold is a setting. An active patient window is a choice. Change any of them and every recall figure moves without a single patient behaving differently.
That is why this page reports each figure separately, states the inputs each one needs, and reads Not Calculated rather than guessing.
There is no single, universally accepted formula called “recall rate.” Software vendors and consultants define it differently, which is why this page never reports one headline recall number. Instead it calculates three separate measurements — reappointment rate, kept-visit share and overdue share of active patients — each with its own stated inputs, and never averaged together.
Reappointment rate. Patients reappointed ÷ patients due × 100.
Kept-visit share. Hygiene visits completed ÷ patients due × 100. Reported separately, never averaged with the rate above.
Overdue share. Overdue patients ÷ active patients × 100, where active means seen in the last 18 months.
Recoverable hygiene visits. The lesser of your overdue count and the open room in your own hygiene schedule — capped, because recovering more visits than the schedule holds is not possible.
Read these measures together as hygiene and patient-retention KPIs, while keeping each formula and denominator separate.
Four different words
Software reports sometimes use them interchangeably, which is where most confusion about recall figures begins.
The calculator below measures the distance between these stages. It does not assume a reappointed patient attended, and it does not assume an overdue patient will return.
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 measurement period you use, as long as the figures come from that same period and the same report.
Contextual only. The period you choose never affects the calculation — it only reminds you that the figures must come from the same period.
Patients seen in the last 18 months — the same definition CORAL's Reef Health diagnostic uses.
How many patients your recall or continuing-care report showed as due during the period.
Of those due patients, how many left with a future hygiene appointment on the books.
Hygiene appointments actually kept and completed during the same period.
The current count of patients past due for hygiene, taken from your recall report.
Total hygiene days across all hygienists during the period.
Your own capacity assumption for one hygiene day, across all hygienists.
Your own figure. It drives the estimate only, and nothing else on this page.
Hygiene reappointment rate
Not Calculated
Patients reappointed ÷ patients due. All figures must cover the same month, on the same reporting basis.
Patients due but not reappointed
Not Calculated
Patients due minus patients reappointed, as entered.
Kept-visit share of patients due
Not Calculated
Hygiene visits completed ÷ patients due. A separate figure from the reappointment rate, never averaged with it.
Overdue share of active patients
Not Calculated
Overdue continuing-care patients ÷ active patients, where active means seen in the last 18 months.
Hygiene visit capacity in the period
Not Calculated
Hygiene days × visits your schedule holds per day. This is your stated assumption, not a measurement.
Open hygiene visits
Not Calculated
Capacity minus hygiene visits completed, shown exactly as entered.
Recoverable hygiene visits
Not Calculated
The lesser of your overdue patient count and your open hygiene visits, never below zero — when there is no open capacity, it reads 0. Both figures are yours; nothing is extrapolated.
Estimated value of recoverable visits
Not Calculated
An estimate only: recoverable visits × the average visit value you entered. It is not lost revenue, not money owed, and not a forecast.
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%.
Recoverable visits are bounded by two figures you supplied. The dollar figure beneath it depends entirely on an average visit value you assumed, which is why CORAL labels it an estimate and never describes overdue patients as revenue you have lost.
Worked example
A deliberately ordinary set of figures, showing why one headline recall number hides the useful part.
260 patients are overdue, but the schedule only has room for 42 more visits in the period. The honest number is 42, not 260 — and the dollar figure beside it exists only because a visit value was assumed. You can load these figures into the calculator above with one click.
The limit nobody prints
An overdue list is only an opportunity to the extent that the schedule can hold it.
Capacity here is your own assumption: hygiene days in the period multiplied by the number of visits you believe one hygiene day holds. CORAL does not know your schedule template, appointment lengths or how much of a day goes to periodontal treatment, so it does not guess any of them.
Recoverable hygiene visits is then the lesser of two numbers you supplied: the overdue count, and the open room in that capacity. It is capped deliberately. A practice with 500 overdue patients and four open visits has four visits of recovery available this period, and a different conversation about hygiene days to have separately. That conversation — stated capacity, utilization, unused room and what adding or removing a hygiene day changes arithmetically — is the subject of CORAL’s dental hygiene capacity calculator.
Overdue patients have not booked anything. Some have moved, some are with another practice, some are simply late. Nothing is owed and nothing is promised, which is why the dollar figure on this page is labelled an estimate built from an average visit value you entered, and is never described as revenue lost.
Money that genuinely is owed to the practice is a different subject entirely, and belongs in your accounts receivable aging report.
How it connects
Recall fills the hygiene schedule. Production and collections come later, and by different routes.
A recovered hygiene visit becomes production when it is completed, and money when it is paid for. Hygiene production per day, collection rate and production per doctor day are separate measurements; this page remains the deeper resource for recall alone.
Hygiene visits also generate restorative diagnosis. Whether that treatment is agreed is a separate measurement, covered by the case acceptance calculator. What is left after expenses is answered by the profitability calculator.
A repeatable routine
These steps are descriptive: none of them sets a target or grades a result.
Write down your recall interval and overdue definitions
Both are settings in your software. Every figure on this page depends on them.
Pull the due, reappointed and seen figures from the same period
Mixing a due list from today with visits from last quarter produces a rate that describes nothing.
Read the reappointment rate and the kept-visit share side by side
A gap between them is a cancellation and no-show question, not a reappointment question.
Work the overdue count as a list, not a number
A named list can be contacted this week. A percentage cannot.
Check your hygiene capacity before planning outreach
There is no point recovering more visits than the schedule can hold; the calculator caps recoverable visits for exactly this reason.
Keep the same definitions every period
Movement is only interpretable when nothing about the measurement changed.
Three-month, four-month and six-month intervals applied by different team members over several years produce a due list that describes historic data entry as much as clinical need.
A patient can be reappointed and never arrive. If one report counts future appointments and another counts completed visits, the two rates will never agree, and neither is wrong.
Software overdue thresholds differ, and a practice that flags patients one day past due will always look worse than one that waits ninety days.
This page uses patients seen in the last 18 months. An 24-month window makes the overdue share look smaller, and a 12-month window makes it look larger, with nothing having changed.
One hygienist on holiday for two weeks moves every figure on this page. Longer, consistent periods move for fewer accidental reasons.
Overdue patients are people who have not booked. Some have moved, some have another dentist, some will never return. Any dollar figure built from them is an assumption, not a debt.
Each figure unlocks specific results. Anything you cannot pull simply reads Not Calculated.
Active patient count (seen in the last 18 months)
Overdue share of active patients.
Continuing-care patients due in the period
Reappointment rate and kept-visit share.
Patients reappointed from that due group
Reappointment rate and patients not reappointed.
Hygiene visits completed in the period
Kept-visit share and open hygiene visits.
Overdue continuing-care patient count
Overdue share and recoverable hygiene visits.
Hygiene days in the period
Hygiene visit capacity.
Visits your schedule holds per hygiene day
Hygiene visit capacity and open visits.
Average value of a hygiene visit
The estimated value of recoverable visits, as an assumption.
The calculator above reports practice-level figures. Splitting recall further can be informative, and can also mislead. CORAL does not calculate these today, and does not imply them from a single number.
A separate question from whether patients return: whether the practice has room for them at all, and what an added hygiene day would hold.
Needs: Hygiene days, visits held per day, visits delivered, and the schedule template you actually run.
Can show where reappointment at the chair is consistent. It can also turn a shared outcome into individual blame, since the hygienist does not control the due list.
Needs: Due, reappointed and completed figures per hygienist, for the same period.
Three-month and six-month patients behave very differently. Averaging them hides both, and explains many unstable recall figures.
Needs: Due and reappointed figures split by the interval recorded against each patient.
Next steps
A percentage describes an outcome. The systems behind it are where it moves.
The free Reef Health diagnostic reads how hygiene time is filled, how overdue continuing care is worked, and whether treatment identified in hygiene is scheduled before the patient leaves — the systems that sit behind a recall rate rather than the rate 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
A recall system — also called recare or continuing care — is the process that brings existing patients back for hygiene at the interval recorded for them. In practice it has four parts: an interval set against each patient, a due list produced from those intervals, reappointment at the chair or by outreach, and a worked list of patients who are overdue. This page calculates the measurable parts of that process from figures your software already reports.
Divide the patients reappointed by the patients who were due in the same period and multiply by 100. Separately, divide the hygiene visits actually completed by the patients due to see how many of them arrived. The calculator on this page produces both figures independently, because a patient can be reappointed and still not attend.
Most practices use the terms loosely. On this page, reappointment rate means patients who left with a future hygiene appointment divided by patients due, and kept-visit share means hygiene visits completed divided by patients due. Reporting them separately is deliberate: the first describes the booking conversation and the second describes what the schedule delivered.
This page uses patients seen in the last 18 months, which is the definition CORAL's Reef Health diagnostic uses. Other windows are defensible, and a wider window will always make an overdue share look smaller. Whichever window you use, use the same one every period and take it from the same report.
A patient whose recall interval has passed with no future appointment booked. How long past the interval your software waits before flagging them is a setting rather than a fact, so two correct reports from the same ledger can produce different overdue counts. Record the setting you use alongside the number.
CORAL does not publish an ideal, average, healthy or target recall percentage. Published figures vary enormously because practices set intervals, define overdue and count reappointments differently. This page explains what each figure measures and what moves it, so you can read your own numbers over time rather than compare them with another practice.
Practice-management systems differ on what they treat as due, whether they count future appointments or completed visits, how long a patient must be past due to appear as overdue, and which date they attribute a visit to. This calculator uses only the figures you supply, so the result reflects your own definitions rather than a vendor's.
Some of them, sometimes. Overdue patients have not booked anything, so nothing is owed and nothing is promised. This page therefore caps recoverable hygiene visits at the lesser of your overdue count and the open room in your own hygiene schedule, and treats any dollar figure as an estimate built from an average visit value you entered — never as lost revenue.
Most practices look at the due and overdue lists weekly, because those are operational lists that can be worked immediately, and review the rates monthly or quarterly, where a longer period moves for fewer accidental reasons.
Both, at different moments. Reappointment before the patient leaves usually sits with hygiene; working the overdue list, outreach and confirmations usually sits with the front desk. Splitting the figures on this page tends to show which of the two moments is where the patients are being lost.
CORAL publishes no recall 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.
