📝 Overview
New Patient Retention tracks how many of your new patient appointments convert into return visits, showing the percentage of new patients who came back for a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th visit. It's built to surface where in your new patient visit sequence people are dropping off.
To access this report, go to Reporting > Simple Reporting, then select the New Patient Retention tab.
⚠️ Visit stats on this report are calculated using appointments — not charges. This matches the basis used by the Appointments tab in Simple Reporting, but is the opposite of the Statistics report, which uses charges.
🔽 Filters and Display Options
Option | What It Does |
Date Range | Sets the window of new patient appointments to include |
Starting Appointment Type | The appointment type counted as a patient's "first visit" — typically your New Patient type |
By Time (toggle) | Breaks the results into multiple time-based rows instead of one combined row |
With Payment Information (toggle) | Adds Payment Total and Payment Type columns to the output |
📊 What the Report Shows
The core table shows, for the new patients in your date range:
Column | What It Represents |
New Patient Appointments | The count of new patient appointments in the date range |
1 Visit % | Percentage who came in for only 1 visit (did not return) |
2 Visit % | Percentage who returned for a 2nd visit |
3 Visit % | Percentage who returned for a 3rd visit |
4 Visit % | Percentage who returned for a 4th visit |
5 Visit % | Percentage who returned for a 5th visit |
With With Payment Information toggled on, two more columns appear: Payment Total and Payment Type, tying retention data to what those patients have paid.
With By Time toggled on, the same visit-percentage breakdown is repeated across multiple time-based rows instead of one combined row — useful for comparing retention trends across different periods within your selected date range rather than a single blended number.
🎨 Drop-Off Color Coding
Each visit percentage column is color-coded based on the size of the drop-off from the prior visit stage:
Color | Drop-Off Size |
Minor drop | 10–20% drop from the previous visit stage |
Medium drop | 20–30% drop from the previous visit stage |
Major drop | Over 30% drop from the previous visit stage |
This makes it easy to scan the table and immediately spot which visit transition (1st to 2nd, 2nd to 3rd, etc.) is losing the most patients, without having to calculate the differences yourself.
❓ Common Questions
What counts as a patient's "1st visit" for this report? Whatever appointment type you select under Starting Appointment Type — typically your New Patient appointment type. Change this if your office uses a different appointment type to mark a patient's first visit.
Why do my numbers here differ from the Statistics report's "Stayed in Practice" figure? Stayed in Practice on the Statistics report is a single percentage for patients who returned for a 2nd chiropractic visit. This report breaks that same concept down further — showing 1st through 5th visit retention separately, with color-coded drop-off severity — and is calculated from appointments rather than charges.
What does the color coding actually tell me? It flags the size of the drop-off between consecutive visit stages, not the raw percentage itself. A "major drop" means a large percentage of patients didn't make it from one visit to the next — that's the stage in your new patient process most worth investigating.
Should I use By Time or the standard view? The standard view gives you one blended percentage across your full date range. By Time breaks that into separate time-based rows so you can see whether retention is improving, declining, or holding steady within the period — useful when comparing trends rather than just a single snapshot.
✅ Key Takeaways
New Patient Retention shows the percentage of new patients who returned for their 2nd through 5th visit, calculated from appointments, not charges.
Starting Appointment Type defines what counts as a patient's first visit — adjust if your office uses something other than the default New Patient type.
By Time breaks results into multiple rows for trend comparison; With Payment Information adds payment data per row.
Visit percentage columns are color-coded by drop-off severity (minor, medium, major) so you can immediately spot the weakest point in your new patient visit sequence.
📌 Conclusion
New Patient Retention turns a single retention number into a stage-by-stage breakdown, making it easy to pinpoint exactly where new patients are falling out of care — whether that's after the first visit, the third, or later. The color-coded drop-offs do the comparison work for you, so the report is most useful as a quick visual scan rather than something you need to manually calculate trends from.