Patient self discharge rates

[lehughes]

I read and interesting blog the other day and it was titled: What is your patient self discharge rate? (Okay, so we're talking dogs, and they don't discharge themselves... so semantics for US could be 'What is your client self-discharge rate?)

I bet most of you don't know or haven't calculated it!
The article started by saying that the healthcare industry is not alone:
32% of people that open a new Canadian bank account will close it within the first 100 days.
46% of people that visit Chuck E Cheese never go back again!

But down to the nitty gritty... The article stated that in HUMAN physical therapy practice, about 60% of our patients self-discharge (i.e. they just stop coming). Does that mean they felt better? Did they feel like their progress had stagnated? Did they decide you weren't helping anymore or had run out of ideas for them? Did they THINK you had discharged them? No matter the answer, the problem still remains, they didn't 'complete' their treatment.

So, my questions to all of you readers are as follows:
1) Do you measure your self-discharges or patient 'fall offs'?
2) Do you currently have a strategy for customer RE-activation?
3) Do you have IDEAS for customer re-activation?

Did you know that brining back old clients is easier and cheaper than acquiring new ones? So we should all add customer re-activation to our marketing activities.

Okay folks, so lets put on our thinking caps and help each other out to brain storm.
PLEASE let the discussion and ideas flow freely!

Cheers,
Laurie