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Metrics·March 26, 2026·2 min

Cancellation & No-Show Rate

The silent killer of dental practice revenue.

Your cancellation and no-show rate is the percentage of scheduled appointments that don't happen. either because the patient cancelled or just didn't show up.

What's a good number?

Under 10% combined is good. Under 5% is excellent. If you're above 15%, you have a systemic problem, whether it's confirmation processes, patient communication, or scheduling too far out.

Why it matters

A cancelled appointment is lost production you can rarely recover. If you average $300 per visit and have 5 no-shows a week, that's $6,000/month walking out the door. Over a year, that's $72,000 in lost production from a single metric.

How to track it

Your PMS tracks appointment statuses (completed, cancelled, no-show, broken). The key is reviewing it as a percentage over time, not just a raw count. Denta flags this and trends it alongside your other scheduling metrics.

JB

Jack Beecher

Founder & CEO at Denta

Track this metric automatically

Denta calculates your KPIs from your PMS data — no spreadsheets, no manual reports.

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