TL;DR
Define a new dental patient before accepting an agency's acquisition total. Keep inquiries, scheduled examinations, attended examinations, returning patients and transferred records separate. Use practice-controlled identity reconciliation and explicit cohort rules so a practice purchase or a repeated contact does not appear as fresh acquisition.
Ask what event earned the label
When a report says “new patients,” ask for the operational event behind the total. Was a phone button clicked, a request received, a chart created or an examination attended? Those labels answer different questions and should not silently replace each other.
The distinction becomes especially important after buying a practice. Importing the seller's records may create new entries in the buyer's software without introducing new people to the acquired business. Similarly, a long-absent patient can reappear through an advertisement while remaining an existing practice relationship under your agreed definition.
This article proposes a reporting dictionary, not a clinical, billing or universal industry definition. Have practice leadership choose the acquisition definition, preserve any separately required financial or clinical classifications and disclose differences in the report.
Agree the event dictionary with scheduling
Use the underlying system and evidence for each event. Do not let a dashboard decide what happened because it has a convenient field called “conversion.”
| Reporting label | Evidence required | What stays separate |
|---|---|---|
| Search or profile action | Named platform action and period | Inquiry receipt and patient identity |
| Inquiry received | Approved receiving system logs a request or answered contact | Duplicates, spam and existing-patient administration |
| Prospective new-patient inquiry | Practice classifies an inquiry under its agreed relationship rule | A confirmed examination |
| Examination scheduled | Scheduling system confirms the relevant appointment type | Cancellations, rescheduling and attendance |
| Examination attended | Practice verifies attendance for the defined appointment | Treatment, revenue and retention |
| Returning patient | Practice confirms a prior relationship under its rule | New acquisition |
| Transferred record | Authorized migration or practice acquisition record | A new inquiry or attended visit |
| Unknown relationship | Practice cannot resolve the history reliably | Assumed new-patient credit |
Google Business Profile's “Calls” metric counts call-button clicks. It does not confirm that the office answered or classified a prospective patient. Keep that platform label in the discovery section. Google's performance definitions.
Keep identity reconciliation inside the practice
Give the practice's authorized reporting owner responsibility for reconciling identities in approved systems. A shared family phone number is not a reliable patient key. A parent may inquire for children, a prospective patient may call and submit a form, and an appointment may be rescheduled without representing additional people.
Set an inquiry-episode rule: related contacts about the same person's pending appointment request belong to the same episode under a documented review period. Keep the contact events for operational workload analysis while avoiding duplicate acquisition credit. If identity cannot be resolved appropriately, retain unknowns rather than joining people by a guess.
Specify how household inquiries are handled. Do not count household members as acquired patients until the selected person-level event is evidenced. Do not suppress the separate staff workload of a household call merely because the acquisition report uses people rather than calls.
Marketing partners do not need patient narratives to understand these definitions. Have the practice's responsible privacy reviewer approve the actual fields, aggregation and recipient before sharing a report. A removed name alone should not be treated as automatic permission to disclose the remaining record.
Reconcile the acquisition import before claiming growth
After a practice purchase, have the authorized system owner distinguish a migrated chart, a new chart for an inherited person and an inquiry from someone new to the continuing practice. Preserve the migration evidence inside the approved system. A different software identifier or a buyer's newly created chart does not, by itself, change the person's relationship history.
Check household handling during the same reconciliation. A parent's contact can concern separate people, while repeated contacts can concern the same person's examination. Record the person-level attendance evidence under the chosen rule without treating either the household or the chart-import batch as the acquisition unit. Report unresolved history explicitly and keep the agency's output at the approved summary level.
Add an examination-and-hygiene rule to the dictionary. If the practice schedules those visits separately, preserve each appointment event but do not count the person as newly acquired again when the hygiene visit occurs. If the practice offers a combined visit, do not split its attendance into extra acquired people. The reporting owner should record the approved entry event, relationship at the original inquiry, linked appointment states and unresolved history. These rules classify acquisition; they do not prescribe the clinical sequence.
Freeze the cohort boundary before comparing agencies
Write whether “new” means new to the legal entity, the continuing practice, the location or the reporting system, and anchor relationship status to the original inquiry date. An acquired practice can choose a business-useful continuity cohort while its accounting team maintains a different transaction definition. Display the chosen acquisition definition beside the number. Preserve that original status when later attendance or a software migration changes the record.
For the reporting period, preserve the inquiry start date and the later appointment state separately. Someone who inquires before the period ends and attends afterward should not disappear or become another acquisition. Label incomplete follow-up rather than comparing a mature cohort with an unresolved recent cohort.
Keep the source rule explicit too. An inherited record, a referral naming the former owner and a new campaign inquiry are different evidence. Where attribution is uncertain, report that uncertainty. Website activity does not fill the gap: Google Analytics defines sessions as interaction periods, and a user can initiate later sessions. Session totals therefore do not identify unique new patients. Google's session definition.
Reconcile a report before renewing the claim
Ask the agency and practice reporting owner to walk through disputed categories using practice-approved summaries. Record the reported label, agreed definition, source system, reconciliation rule, unresolved count and correction owner. Keep the audit evidence in the appropriate restricted location.
Do not calculate an acquisition rate from totals that cover different cohorts or stages. Use the measurement guide for compatible event series and the reporting specification for method disclosure. The dental dictionary adds the relationship and transfer rules those general reports cannot infer.
If the records only verify inquiries, report inquiries. If attendance is verified but source is unknown, report attendance with unknown source. A narrower accurate report gives the owner a firmer basis for the next purchase than an impressive total whose definition changes every meeting.
Frequently asked questions
Is a chart created in our new software a new patient?
Not necessarily for acquisition reporting. Check whether it is an imported record, duplicate, returning relationship or genuinely new inquiry, then apply the definition agreed before reporting.
Should rescheduled examinations count again?
Retain scheduling activity for operations, but apply the person and episode rules to acquisition credit. A changed appointment date should not automatically create another acquired person.
Can the agency reconcile the records for us?
Define the task and actual data access separately with the practice's responsible people. The reporting dictionary can be agreed using approved summaries without giving the agency unrestricted patient-system access.