Blogs · July 2026
What does a missed call really cost a dental practice?
A missed call is rarely a message. Most callers ring the next practice instead. Here is what leaks while your team is chairside, and how to catch it.
The short answer: a missed call is usually a lost booking, not a missed message. More than half of people will not leave a voicemail when they cannot get through. So the real cost is not the minute it takes to ring someone back. It is the patient who never rings back at all, because they have already rung the practice down the road.
Why practices miss calls even when nobody is slacking
Nobody misses calls on purpose. They get missed because of how a practice actually runs:
- The phone rings while your receptionist is checking in a patient at the desk.
- It rings during the lunchtime gap, when the desk is covered by one person, or nobody.
- It rings at 7pm on a Tuesday, when a toothache starts and your practice is shut.
- It rings while your nurse is chairside and cannot get to it.
The result is a queue of voicemails nobody has time to work through, and a number of callers who were never captured at all, because they hung up and dialled someone else.
What the numbers actually say
Be careful with the figures floating around dentistry. Plenty of the "missed call" statistics you will see quoted come from American vendor blogs. Here is what can genuinely be sourced.
| What we can actually back with a source | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| People who will not leave a voicemail if they cannot get through | 54% | Moneypenny, UK, 2024 |
| People who would go elsewhere after a poor phone experience | 38% | Moneypenny, UK, 2024 |
| NHS dental appointments lost to patients not attending (Wales) | 9.4%, about 3.5 hours of clinical time per practice per week | Welsh Government, citing NHS Business Services Authority, 2023 |
| People who tried to get an NHS dental appointment and succeeded | 78%, so about one in five tried and failed | NHS England, GP Patient Survey dental statistics, 2025 |
There is no national figure for missed dental appointments in England. Anyone quoting one is almost certainly repeating something that cannot be traced. The Wales figure is the strongest national number available, so that is the one worth working from, labelled honestly.
The quiet part: demand is not your problem
The temptation is to read a missed call as a marketing problem, so practices spend more on ads. Look at the access figures and you can see the real picture. Roughly one in five people who tried to book an NHS dental appointment could not get one. Only 32% of the UK public say they are confident they can access dental care at all, according to the General Dental Council.
The demand is already ringing your phone. It is the answering that is failing, not the marketing.
What to do about it
You have three honest options.
- Hire more front-desk cover. It works, and it costs a salary. It also still leaves you uncovered at 7pm and on Sundays.
- Use an answering service. Calls get picked up by a human who does not know your practice, cannot see your diary, and takes a message. You still have to ring everyone back.
- Put an AI agent on the line. It answers every call in seconds, day or night, in your practice's voice. It knows your treatments, your fees, your opening hours and your policies, because it is trained on them. It books straight into your diary.
The point of the third option is not to replace your receptionist. It is to make sure the phone is never the reason a patient goes elsewhere. Your team keeps doing the work that needs a human, and the overflow and the out-of-hours stop leaking.
What HealthCentre will not do
It never gives clinical advice. It answers the admin: booking, fees, opening hours, directions, policies, recalls and reminders. If a caller describes a problem that needs a clinician, or anything that sounds urgent, it says so and puts them through to a person on your team.
Frequently asked questions
How many calls does a dental practice actually miss?
There is no reliable national figure, and you should be suspicious of anyone who quotes one. The number that matters is your own. Most practice phone systems can tell you how many inbound calls went unanswered last month. Start there.
Will patients know they are talking to an AI?
Yes, and they should. It introduces itself. What patients care about is that someone picked up and sorted them out, rather than a voicemail nobody returns.
Does it replace my receptionist?
No. It covers the calls your team cannot reach in time, and the hours you are closed. Your receptionist keeps the patients in front of them.
Can it book straight into our system?
Yes. It sits alongside the practice management system you already run, reads the real availability and books into it. Nothing to rip out.
Sources
- Moneypenny, Customer Communications Trend Report, January 2024 (UK). 54% will not leave a voicemail; 38% would go elsewhere after a poor call experience. https://www.moneypenny.com/uk/resources/news/new-research-reveals-phone-pet-peeves-costing-business/
- Welsh Government, citing NHS Business Services Authority, January 2023. 9.4% of NHS dental appointments in Wales lost to non-attendance, about 3.5 hours of clinical time per practice per week. https://www.gov.wales/over-100000-extra-dental-appointments-year-missed-appointments-continue-bite
- NHS England, GP Patient Survey dental statistics, July 2025. 78% of those who tried to get an NHS dental appointment were successful. https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/patient-surveys/gp-patient-survey/gpps-dental-statistics/gp-patient-survey-dental-statistics-january-to-march-2025-england/
- General Dental Council, Views and Experiences of Dentistry, August 2024. 32% of the UK public are confident in their ability to access dental care. https://www.gdc-uk.org/news-blogs/news/detail/2024/08/01/gdc-publishes-new-research-on-the-public-s-experiences-of-dentistry
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