---
title: Active Maintenance Effectiveness- a new year’s resolution
description: With little to almost no marketing costs required, many practices don't realise the potential percentage of profit sitting within their own patient files. By focusing on an effective active maintenance process, practices can easily increase their production revenue by up to 30% extra per year.
---

[Articles ](https://articles.primepractice.com.au/blog)

# [Active Maintenance Effectiveness- a new year’s resolution](https://articles.primepractice.com.au/blog/active-maintenance-effectiveness-a-new-years-resolution)

 Written by [Dr Phillip Palmer](https://articles.primepractice.com.au/blog/author/dr-phillip-palmer) | Sep 3, 2018 6:08:53 AM

**Dr Phillip Palmer, November 2014** 

The average dental practice has about 1300-1500 active patients. Let’s say for the purposes of this article, 1400.

[**NOTE: We have updated this article. Click here to read more.](https://articles.primepractice.com.au/blog/how-effective-is-your-practices-recall-system)

And most of us agree that these 1400 patients should be coming in, even if for check-up and maintenance only, twice a year. This can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to the practice, as well as improving the health of our patients.

When we survey many of the new clients who've just joined our program, it seems that there is often only 20-30% of that 1400 that has been into the practice in the past 6 months. Our experience is that our clients can increase that by up to 30% extra per year, until it gets to more than 75% effectiveness.

There is no marketing needed to get them in. There are very little costs involved at all. So the return on investment (ROI) if we achieve an increase in the effectiveness of the system is potentially extremely high!

All we need is the right systems, the right communication skills from the clinicians, the right practice culture and everyone in the team behind it. All Prime Practice Management Program clients know what needs to be done, but many of us can become complacent. We forget about the little things that need to be said and done. We stop checking our numbers.

Make an end-of-year resolution to turn it around. Re-establish the profitable heart of your practice...the active maintenance department.

[View full post](https://articles.primepractice.com.au/blog/active-maintenance-effectiveness-a-new-years-resolution)

```json
{
  "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "Dr Phillip Palmer"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2019-09-05T00:54:52.004Z",
  "datePublished" : "2018-09-03T06:08:53Z",
  "headline" : "Active Maintenance Effectiveness- a new year’s resolution",
  "image" : {
    "@type" : "ImageObject",
    "height" : 60,
    "url" : "/hs/hsstatic/content_shared_assets/static-1.4092/img/default-amp-logo.png",
    "width" : 60
  },
  "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://articles.primepractice.com.au/blog/active-maintenance-effectiveness-a-new-years-resolution",
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "height" : 60.0,
      "url" : "https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/3107308/PP%20Logo%202019_Stacked_RGB.png",
      "width" : 60.000004
    },
    "name" : "Articles"
  }
}
```