Patient Recall Is a Business Function
Most clinics believe they already do patient recall; almost none do it well, because recall is a business function, not a few emails and phone calls.
Jared Aron
Show notes
Jared Aron takes apart a claim he hears constantly: 'we already do recall.' A phone call at lunchtime and a few emails in a junk folder are not recall. The channels are wrong, the timing is untested, and there is rarely a dedicated person or any way to tell whether it is working.
His argument is that patient recall and reactivation is a business function, like accounting or marketing, with its own playbook, tools and owner. Hiring one junior person to manage tens of thousands of patients with no tools just pours money into a bucket with no bottom. Done properly, recall is workforce transformation, not a bit more revenue.
He walks through a dictionary of malpractices (the holiday blackout, the once-a-year recall ritual, the hospitality blind spot and the passive calendar) before laying out the recall engine itself: identify who is in the patient body, map where each patient sits in their journey, then match the message, channel and timing to that stage.
Key takeaways
- One phone call and a few emails is not recall; the channels are wrong, the timing is untested, and the messages often go unread or unanswered.
- Recall deserves to be run like accounting or marketing, a specialist function with its own playbook, tools and owner, not a task bolted onto front-of-house.
- Most practices cannot tell whether recall is working because they never track why patients disengage or how much revenue actually returns.
- The holiday blackout exposes single points of failure: when one star booking coordinator is away, conversion and new-patient flow can stop entirely.
- A passive calendar gets managed 24 to 48 hours out, when real optimization means filling gaps weeks and months in advance.
- The recall engine runs in three steps: identify who is in the patient body, map where each patient sits in their journey, then match message, channel and timing to that stage.
“You're just pouring bad money into the bucket, and the bucket has no bottom.”— Jared Aron
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