Free calculator

What do no-shows cost your practice?

Pick the kind of visit, enter your own numbers and see the monthly and yearly cost, what a better reminder routine could recover, and the texts and emails to send. Nothing to submit, and every assumption is yours to change.

Kind of visit

Each one fills in starter numbers and picks the message wording below. The numbers are our own guesses, not statistics. Replace them with yours.

Booked appointments per week

Average across the year, for the schedule you are counting. Your booking system's weekly report has the real number.

No-show rate

Share of booked appointments where the person does not come and the slot goes unused. Include same-day cancellations you cannot refill. Your booking system's no-show report has the real rate.

We could not confirm a published no-show rate for private dental practices, so there is nothing to compare this against. The nearest figure we checked is below, and it comes from one university pediatric clinic.

Average value of one appointment

What a typical booked visit brings in. Revenue, not profit.

Share of no-show slots you can refill

Slots you can fill again at short notice from a waitlist or a call list. The rest stay empty.

Reminders you send per appointment today

Count every text, email or call that goes out after booking, automated or by hand. This shapes the message sequence below. It does not change the dollar figures.

Assumptions you can change

These two are planning assumptions, not measured facts. Our starting values sit between the published results listed below. Replace them with what you expect and the result updates.

Drop in your no-show rate from a reminder and confirmation sequence

A relative drop: 20% turns a 10% no-show rate into 8%. Published results vary a lot (see the sources below), and the result shows a smaller and a larger case.

Extra share of no-show slots you refill with a waitlist

Percentage points added to your refill share above: 10 turns 20% into 30%.

Estimated revenue lost to no-shows each year, after the slots you refill

$36,400

About $3,033 a month

21.7

No-shows a month

260 a year

$45,500

Booked value that no-shows put at risk each year

before refilling any slots

$9,100

Won back by refilling slots today

20% of no-show slots

What you could win back

$10,920 a year, about $910 a month

If a reminder and confirmation routine cut your no-show rate from 10% to 8%, and a waitlist lifted the share of empty slots you refill from 20% to 30%, that is about 52 fewer no-shows a year and about 20.8 more refilled slots. Both numbers are the assumptions you set above.

From fewer no-shows: $7,280 a year
From refilling more of the rest: $3,640 a year

How much the drop assumption matters

Only the no-show drop changes in this table. The two outer cases come from the published results listed below, and neither is a promise for your practice.

Recoverable revenue each year at three assumed drops in the no-show rate
Case	Drop in no-show rate	Recoverable a year
Smaller	7%	$6,780
Your assumption	20%	$10,920
Larger	33%	$15,061

How to read this: it is a planning estimate built from your inputs and the assumptions above, not a prediction. It counts revenue, not profit, treats every no-show as lost unless the slot is refilled, and does not count people who rebook later or fees you collect. The two numbers that move it most are your real no-show rate and the share of slots you can refill. Pull both from last quarter's booking report and run it again.

Reminder and confirmation messages to copy

Drafts for dental hygiene visits. Recall visits are often booked months ahead, so the confirmation goes out a week before, early enough to refill the slot from a waitlist. Change the kind of visit above and the wording and timing change with it.

We assume the one reminder you send today is our top priority (Confirmation request), so the next to add: Reminder, then Booking confirmation. Adjust that to match what you really send.

Replace the [highlighted] parts with your details and policy. These are starting drafts, not tested wording, and nothing here promises a result.

Message 1 of 5
Booking confirmation
Right after booking
Add next
Confirms the details and states your change policy once, up front.
Text message
Hi [First name], you are booked at [Practice name] on [Day], [Date] at [Time]. Need to change it? Call [Phone] or use [Link]. Reply STOP to opt out.
Email wording
Subject
You are booked: [Day], [Date] at [Time]
Body
Hi [First name], Your appointment at [Practice name] is booked for [Day], [Date] at [Time] with [Provider]. If you need to change it, please let us know at least [24 hours] ahead by calling [Phone] or using [Link]. That lets us offer the time to someone on our waitlist. For your privacy, please do not reply to this email with health details. Call us instead. [Practice name] [Phone]
Message 2 of 5
Confirmation request
7 days before
You may already send this
Asks for a reply. Booked far ahead, so a week-before confirmation catches changes while there is still time to offer the slot to someone else.
Text message
Hi [First name], it is [Practice name]. You are booked for [Day], [Date] at [Time]. Please reply C to confirm or R to reschedule. A quick reply lets us offer unused times to people on our waitlist.
Email wording
Subject
Please confirm your appointment on [Date]
Body
Hi [First name], You are booked at [Practice name] on [Day], [Date] at [Time] with [Provider]. Please confirm with one click, or pick another time: [Link] A quick reply lets us offer unused times to people on our waitlist. For your privacy, please do not reply to this email with health details. Call us instead. [Practice name] [Phone]
Message 3 of 5
No-reply follow-up
24 hours after the confirmation request, if there is no reply
Only send this if it is true: say you may offer the time to your waitlist only if that is your practice's policy. A phone call from the front desk is the next step after this text.
Text message
Hi [First name], we have not heard back about [Day] at [Time] at [Practice name]. Reply C to keep it or R to move it. If we cannot reach you, we may offer the time to someone on our waitlist.
Message 4 of 5
Reminder
2 days before
Add next
A reminder, not a question. Practical details (arrival time, forms) rather than a second confirmation request.
Text message
[First name], a reminder from [Practice name]: [Day] at [Time] with [Provider]. Please arrive [10] minutes early so we can update your forms. Cannot make it? Call [Phone] at least [24 hours] ahead so we can offer the time to someone else.
Email wording
Subject
Reminder: [Day] at [Time] at [Practice name]
Body
Hi [First name], A reminder that you are booked at [Practice name] on [Day], [Date] at [Time] with [Provider]. Please arrive [10] minutes early so we can update your forms. If you cannot make it, please call [Phone] at least [24 hours] ahead so we can offer the time to someone else. [Practice name] [Phone]
Message 5 of 5
Morning-of text
The morning of the visit
Short and text only. Gives running-late patients a number to call before the slot is lost.
Text message
Good morning [First name]. We look forward to seeing you today at [Time] at [Practice name]. Running late? Call [Phone].

Refill message

Waitlist offer

When a slot opens, to people on your waitlist

This is the message that refills a slot. Send it to a short list in one go and honour the first reply, so two people are not promised the same time.

Text message

Hi [First name], a time just opened at [Practice name]: [Day], [Date] at [Time]. Reply YES within [30 minutes] to take it. Reply STOP to opt out.

Before you send any of these

No message names the visit or treatment on purpose. A text can be read by anyone holding the phone, so keep it to the time and place.
Only text people who have agreed to receive texts, and keep the opt-out line. Your texting provider may require it in every message. We are not lawyers, so check the rules that apply to your practice.
Say only what is true. Do not tell people about a waitlist, a deposit or a late fee unless you actually have one, and fill in the notice period and fees from your own policy.
Ask people not to send health details by text or email, and answer those by phone.

Even half of this, $5,460 a year, is worth a conversation

A free call takes about 15 minutes. We will check your numbers and tell you honestly whether automated reminders and a waitlist would pay off in your case.

Book a free call Call Emma, our AI: (347) 757-4410

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What published sources report

For comparison with your own numbers. None of these is used as a default here, none is specific to your practice, and the settings differ, so read each one for what it is. We read each page linked here on 3 October 2026.

No-show rates

Med spas, overall: an average between 17% and 22%, from the blog of a customer-retention software company (regulr, 17 March 2026), which credits ProspyrMed's 2025 analysis of scheduling data. The page links only to ProspyrMed's home page, not to the analysis, so we could not check it.
Med spas, by visit type (same regulr page, not separately attributed there): Botox and fillers 12% to 15%, facials and peels 18% to 25%, body contouring 20% to 28%, new-client consultations 25% to 35%, follow-ups 15% to 20%.
Dental: 14.3% of 7,379 pediatric visits at a university dental school clinic in Buffalo, New York were no-shows (de Oliveira et al., International Journal of Dentistry, 2025). One academic pediatric clinic, not a private general practice. We found no published rate for US private dental practices that we could confirm.
Medical, for scale: an average no-show rate of 18.8% across ten clinics at one US veterans' medical center, 1997 to 2008 (Kheirkhah et al., BMC Health Services Research, 2016). Not dental or med spa.

What reminders changed

Text message reminders versus none: attendance of 67.8% without reminders and 78.6% with text reminders, pooled across seven trials and 5,841 participants, rated moderate-quality evidence (Gurol-Urganci et al., Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2013). Healthcare appointments of many kinds, not dental or med spa. Our arithmetic: non-attendance of 32.2% against 21.4% is a fall of about a third, which is where the larger case above comes from.
A reminder-letter system: the average no-show rate was 18.17% in the four years before and 16.96% in the four years after, a fall of about 7%, which the authors call modest (Kheirkhah et al., above). That is the smaller case above. Letters, not texts, at a veterans' medical center.
Automated reminders at dental practices: no-shows reduced by 22.95 percent across 64 US dental practices and 1,604,184 appointments, in an analysis by Sesame Communications, which the article describes as the company that pioneered the first automated appointment reminder system for dentistry. Reported by Dental Tribune, 19 June 2013. The article gives no baseline rate and does not say whether the figure is relative or in percentage points, so we do not use it as a case.

How the math works

A year is 52 weeks and a month is one twelfth of a year. Everything is revenue, not profit.

No-shows a year = booked appointments a week × 52 × your no-show rate.
Booked value at risk = no-shows a year × average value of one appointment.
Cost of no-shows = booked value at risk × (1 − the share of no-show slots you refill). That is the headline figure, and the monthly figure is that divided by 12.
After the improvements: the no-show rate is multiplied by (1 − the drop you assume), and the refill share goes up by the extra points you assume, never above 100%. The cost is worked out again with those two numbers.
Recoverable = cost today − cost after. It splits into two parts that add up exactly: fewer no-shows (valued at what they cost today, after refills) and more of the remaining no-shows refilled.

The reminders-per-appointment field does not enter the math. It only decides which messages are marked as the next ones to add.

What the starter numbers are

Every starter number is our own guess, chosen to be round and modest. The med spa no-show rates sit at or below the vendor ranges above, so the estimate does not overstate. The assumed drop of 20% sits between the 7% and 33% cases from the sources, and the extra refill share of 10 points is a plain guess. Your own booking report is a better input than any of them.

Starter numbers for each kind of visit
Kind of visit	Appointments a week	No-show rate	Value of a visit	Slots refilled
Dental hygiene visits	50	10%	$175	20%
Dental restorative visits	30	8%	$450	15%
Med spa injectables	25	12%	$500	15%
Med spa facials	20	15%	$200	20%

What it leaves out

Every appointment is valued at the same average. Long and short visits, new and returning people, and members all differ.
People who miss a visit and rebook cost you less than shown. Raise the refill share, or lower the visit value, to reflect that.
Cancellation fees and deposits you collect are not subtracted, and neither are supplies you save when a visit does not happen.
A no-show can also cost you the relationship, which this does not price.
It assumes the schedule is full enough that an empty slot really is lost. If you have spare capacity anyway, the cost is lower.

See how this applies to your industry

Real Estate Contractors Med Spas Dental Practices

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Free tool by OMII AI: omii.agency/tools/no-show-cost/. A planning estimate built from the numbers entered above, not a guarantee.