Talent, Turnover, and the Follow-Up Gap
Patient retention is a staffing problem: when the person running your recalls leaves, follow-up stops and patients quietly slip away.
Janine Cresswell
Show notes
Janine Cresswell runs the Dental Recruit Network, placing permanent and locum staff in dental practices. She argues that good hiring starts with the clinic, not the candidate: first understand how a practice works, then match a person to it.
Much of the conversation sits with the front desk and the treatment coordinator, the role dentistry created to guide patients through their treatment plans. Practices often ask for a job title without naming the real problem, so Janine works backwards from the request to the reason behind it.
The discussion then turns to follow-up. Janine describes going years without seeing her own dentist despite working in the industry, a lapse she traces to staff turnover and missing processes. When the person who owns recalls and aftercare leaves, patients quietly slip away, and winning them back costs far less than finding new ones.
Key takeaways
- Janine vets the clinic before the candidate, matching a person to how a practice actually works rather than to a job title alone.
- Dentistry's treatment coordinator role exists to guide patients through treatment plans; it can feel like selling because money is involved, but Janine frames it as patient care.
- Practices often ask for a specific role without naming the underlying problem, so good recruitment means working backwards from the job description to the real need.
- Staff turnover quietly breaks continuity: when a key person leaves, the recall and follow-up work they owned tends to leave with them.
- Janine offers herself as a walking advertisement, going years without a dentist visit despite regular hygiene appointments, because no one followed up on the recall.
- Re-engaging existing patients beats chasing new ones, citing roughly 10% of a patient book slipping each month and, in one case, a 109% quarter-on-quarter lift in recalls.
“The success to anything is follow up.”— Janine Cresswell
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