Dental patient acquisition:
funds, apps and referrals.

People pick a dentist for practical reasons: close to home or work, open when they can come, clear on cost, and recommended by someone they trust. The how patients choose a dentist page goes through the research. This page is about the channels that bring them to your door, and what each one costs you.

For most practices the order runs roughly like this: existing patients' families and friends, Google search and Maps ('dentist Erina', 'emergency dentist open Saturday Newcastle'), booking apps, health fund networks, and paid ads for big treatments like implants and aligners. Record where every new patient came from in your practice software, and you'll know your own order within three months.

Most big health funds run dental networks. Members get a better rebate at a participating practice, which gives them a reason to book there. Bupa's Members First Ultimate, for example, offers eligible extras members 100% back on up to two six-monthly check-up and cleans a year at participating providers, for select items only.

The price for the practice is the fee. When the ACCC authorised a Tasmanian insurer's network in October 2024, it described dentists who join as agreeing to cap fees for certain routine and preventative services provided to the insurer's members. That cap applies to members you'd have seen anyway, not just the new ones the network sends.

So the question is never only 'will we get more patients?'. It's whether the new patients, and the treatment they go on to need, outweigh the lower fee on every member already on your books. That's what the calculator below works out.

Use your own numbers. The starting numbers are made up, and the calculator only looks at check-up and clean fees plus follow-on treatment, not every item a network might cap.

Booking apps are where many patients, especially younger ones, start looking. HotDoc has a section for dentists and says its packages include unlimited online bookings with no new patient fees. Healthengine lists a Dental Suite, a marketplace profile and online booking among its practice products. Neither shows prices on those pages, so ask for a quote and ask how they count a booking.

Treat each app as a shopfront that needs the same care as your Google profile: current hours, the dentists who actually work there, the funds you can claim on the spot, and fees that match your website. A patient who sees one set of hours on the app and another on Google will ring to check, or won't bother.

Then judge each app on new patients who attend and come back, not on bookings. An app that fills Saturday emergency slots with first-timers who never return is worth less than its booking count suggests.

Word of mouth is the best source most practices have, and it's tempting to reward it. Ahpra's advertising guidelines allow offers, but advertising must not offer a gift, discount or other inducement to attract a person to use the service, unless it also states the terms and conditions, in plain language. Advertising also mustn't encourage the indiscriminate or unnecessary use of health services, so a reward tied to booking treatment is a bad look.

Rewarding other practitioners is a different matter. The Dental Board uses the shared Code of conduct, which says practitioners should not offer inducements to colleagues or enter into arrangements that could be perceived to provide inducements. Earn referrals from specialists, GPs and orthodontists with clear reports back and easy booking, not gifts.

The safest referral program is one that doesn't need a reward: a card with the practice name and booking link, a 'tell a friend' line in the follow-up message for patients who've agreed to hear from you, and being genuinely easy to book.

Details in a dental enquiry ('chipped tooth', 'nervous about needles') are health information. The OAIC lists dentists among health service providers, and health service providers are covered by the Privacy Act regardless of annual turnover. In NSW, private practices also follow the HRIP Act's Health Privacy Principles.

In practice: reply to the enquiry they sent, by the channel they used. Don't move enquiry details onto a promotions list without consent. When you do send marketing, the Spam Act's consent, identification and unsubscribe rules apply to every email and text, and using health information for marketing needs consent under the Privacy Act's direct marketing principle. The recalls page covers when a reminder turns into marketing.