What happens to the patient you could not get to the phone
Every figure sourced. Every limitation shown, including the ones that weaken our case.
Where the patient goes instead
Five stages, five separate studies. Never multiplied together.
The call
Lunch, mornings, and whenever the desk is checking someone in.
Source and caveat
Source. Industry call-tracking analyses of dental practices.
Caveat. Vendor-published aggregates, not peer-reviewed. A working figure. Measure your own.
The emergency nobody planned
Whoever answers decides in forty seconds.
Source and caveat
Source. Journal of Dental Research, cited secondhand. A dental hospital study found 14.1%.
Caveat. Range across sources is wide, roughly 10% to 25%. Ten percent is the conservative read.
The emergency room
Between 1% and 2.2% of all ED visits.
Source and caveat
Source. Systematic review, PubMed 33006151; HCUP 2018.
Caveat. Well established across multiple studies. The percentage varies with method; the absolute figure does not.
The prescription
A night in a waiting room, and the tooth is unchanged.
Source and caveat
Source. Emergency department dental utilisation studies.
Caveat. The strongest number here, and the one that most changes how a practice reads a missed call.
Back to you
They were never choosing the ER over you. They used both.
Source and caveat
Source. Cohen et al., J Am Dent Assoc, 2008 (PubMed 18762631).
Caveat. 272 households, Maryland only, low-income sample, nearly two decades old. It does not show they called a dentist first.
And then they tell you again
The answers rarely survive the trip to the chair.
give the same health information more than once
Carta Healthcare survey, 2022spend six minutes or more repeating their history every visit
Carta Healthcare survey, 2022say it makes them less likely to come back
Carta Healthcare survey, 2022Vendor-run survey, healthcare generally rather than dentistry.
Run it on your own numbers
That is roughly 442 hours a year of chair time spent recovering information the practice already had, from patients who already gave it once on the phone.
Six minutes is the published figure. The rest is your practice, so change it and see. This counts time only, not revenue: for that, use the lost-revenue calculator.
The strain this lands on
of dentists report major stress and career burnout
ADA 2024 Trend Reportof those are considering a career change or early retirement
ADA 2024 Trend Reportof burned-out dental staff have cut their hours
State of Work, n≈7,900Workload is the most cited driver. Vendor-run, weighted to staff over owners.
What we have not measured
Cheaper to say than to have you find it later.
- That we reduce burnout. Nobody has run that study. We will not claim it.
- That we keep patients out of emergency rooms. Plausible, unproven.
- A dental-only figure for repeated questioning. The 83% and 42% are general healthcare.
Questions we get
Where do these numbers come from?
Each one is attributed on this page, with its sample and its limitation stated next to it. Where a figure comes from a vendor-run survey rather than peer-reviewed research, or from general healthcare rather than dentistry specifically, we say so in the same breath rather than in a footnote. If a number here does not survive your own checking, tell us and we will correct or remove it.
Why not combine these into a single funnel percentage?
Because the studies use different populations and different methods, so multiplying them together would produce a precise-looking number that none of them supports. A practice with a full-time person on the phones has a very different unanswered-call rate from a two-person desk. The honest version is stage by stage, each with its own source, which is how this page is laid out.
Does Oriva reduce dentist burnout?
We have not measured that and we are not going to claim it. Workload is the most cited driver of burnout in dentistry, and repeated questioning is a measurable component of workload, but nobody has run the study that connects a triage tool to a burnout score. What is measurable is the repetition itself and what it costs in minutes.
How much of this applies to a small practice?
The phone figures scale down cleanly, because a two-person front desk misses proportionally more calls than a larger one, not fewer. The emergency-department numbers are national and describe the environment your patients move through rather than your practice specifically. The chair-time calculation on this page runs on your own inputs, which is the part worth trusting most.
Bring us the number you do not like
If a figure here does not match your practice, that is the better conversation.