What one missed call costs a dental practice
A worksheet for your own numbers, the few published figures that hold up, and why nobody can hand you one dollar amount that fits your practice.
In this article
Every article about dental phones eventually puts a price on a missed call. The price is usually large, round and unsourced. We are not going to do that, because the number depends on your practice: your patients, your fees and how many of your callers would have booked.
What we can give you is the method, the published figures that hold up, and a worksheet you can fill in from your phone records in an afternoon.
Start with the calls that never reach anyone
31 of 100
Patient Prism (opens in a new tab), which sells call analytics to dental practices, counted 11.55 million calls to 8,280 dental locations on its platform. Its report does not define that hang up category, so it may include after hours calls, callers on hold and voicemail. Read it as a sign of scale, not as your rate.
A narrower look comes from Peerlogic (opens in a new tab), which sells AI call answering. In a February 2026 case study of one group of 26 dental practices, it reported a 62% average answer rate. About 38 of every 100 inbound calls were not answered live. One group and one month, from a company with something to sell, but a fair reminder that a busy desk cannot answer every line.
Not every missed caller was going to book
57.1%
Liine (opens in a new tab), a call tracking company, looked at nearly 50,000 new patient leads to U.S. dental practices that use its product. Across them, 57.1% of new patient inquiries became a scheduled appointment. Scheduled is not the same as kept, and these are practices that chose to track their calls, not a random sample.
It is still the best published booking rate we found, and it matters for the worksheet below. A missed call is only lost revenue if the caller would have booked.
When patients try to reach you
Zocdoc (opens in a new tab) reported that nearly half of patients (48%) prefer to book dentist appointments between 5 PM and 9 AM, when the office is typically closed. The figure comes from bookings on its platform in 2023.
Zocdoc’s users book online, so this is not a count of phone calls. It does say plainly that many patients look for you after the front desk has gone home.
The worksheet
You need two counts from your own phone records and one number from your own books. Everything else is arithmetic.
| Line | What to enter | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| A | Unanswered calls a week from numbers you do not recognize | One ordinary week of your own phone records |
| B | The share of those callers who would have booked | Your own booking rate on new patient calls, or Liine’s 57.1% as a starting point |
| C | What a new patient is worth to you in the first year | Your practice management reports: first year production per new patient |
| D | What unanswered calls cost you each month | A × B × C × 52 ÷ 12 |
ESTIMATE, worked through
Say 10 new patient calls a week go unanswered, and those callers would have booked at Liine’s 57.1% rate. That is about 5.7 appointments a week, or about 24 a month (10 × 0.571 × 52 ÷ 12 = 24.7, rounded down). The 10 is a placeholder: use your own count. Then multiply by your own first year value of a new patient to reach dollars.
We leave line C to you on purpose. There is no published, reliable figure for what a new patient is worth to a typical practice. The national averages that do exist measure something else, such as one person’s yearly dental spending across every dentist they see. Your own reports are the only source that fits.
If you want an outside reference for implant cases, Dental Economics (opens in a new tab) published a phone survey of quoted prices for a complete single tooth implant across six U.S. metro areas, with 278 responses. Quoted prices are not collected fees, and more than a third of the responses came from one city.
What it costs to answer instead
The other side of the ledger is coverage. One receptionist costs $4,070 a month for 40 hours a week. That is the median receptionist wage (Bureau of Labor Statistics (opens in a new tab), May 2025), plus the employer’s 7.65% payroll tax (IRS (opens in a new tab)) and its share of single health coverage (KFF (opens in a new tab), 2025).
That buys 40 of the week’s 168 hours. The calls in the evening, at lunch and on Saturday morning still need an answer.
An AI front desk answers every hour of the week. It books into Open Dental once a test booking passes. When a caller needs a person, it saves a callback for your team. See what the launch covers.
Common questions
How much is a missed call worth to a dental practice?
It depends on who was calling. Multiply your unanswered new patient calls by the share who would have booked, then by your own first year value of a new patient. Liine measured a 57.1% booking rate on new patient inquiries in 2023; your own rate is better if you track it.
How many dental calls go unanswered?
Published figures vary with how they count. Patient Prism found that 31 of every 100 callers to the dental locations on its platform hung up before reaching anyone in 2025. A Peerlogic case study of one 26 practice group reported a 62% answer rate in February 2026. Count your own calls for a week to know yours.
Do dental patients call after hours?
Many reach out then. Zocdoc reported that 48% of patients prefer to book dentist appointments between 5 PM and 9 AM, based on its 2023 bookings. That is online booking, not phone calls, but it shows how often patients look for you when the office is closed.
Sources
- Patient Prism, The Dental Patient Access Report, 2026 (opens in a new tab)11.55 million calls to 8,280 dental locations on Patient Prism’s own platform in 2025. The report does not define its hang up category, which may include after hours calls, callers on hold and voicemail.
- Peerlogic, DSO case study, 2026 (opens in a new tab)One group of 26 dental practices, February 2026. Peerlogic sells AI call answering, so it competes with SpiderLabs. One group and one month, not a typical rate.
- Liine, Marketing Benchmark Report: Dentistry, 2024 Edition (opens in a new tab)Nearly 50,000 new patient leads, calls and web forms, from U.S. dental practices that use Liine’s call tracking, in 2023. Scheduled appointments, not kept ones; not a random sample.
- Zocdoc, Meet the dental patient, 2024 (opens in a new tab)Dental bookings on Zocdoc in 2023: online bookings by its own users, not phone calls.
- Dental Economics, A comparative analysis of dental implant costs across major US markets, 2026 (opens in a new tab)A phone survey of 278 dental offices in six U.S. metro areas, September 2025. Quoted prices, not collected fees; more than a third of the responses came from Houston.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Receptionists, 2026 (opens in a new tab)The median receptionist wage, from May 2025 data: the first input of the $4,070 a month.
- IRS, Topic no. 751, Social Security and Medicare withholding rates, 2026 (opens in a new tab)The employer’s 7.65% share of Social Security and Medicare tax: the second input.
- KFF, 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey (opens in a new tab)The employer’s share of single health coverage: the third input.
