What Is a Good No-Show Rate for a Medical Practice?

A good no-show rate is under 8% across most specialties, and under 5% puts you in the top decile. Industry medians run far higher — primary care 19%, behavioral health 30–40%, general dentistry 11–15% — yet every specialty has a top quartile running at roughly half its median rate.

TL;DR. Across all US medical and dental practices, under 8% is good and under 5% is excellent. Median rates vary by specialty: primary care 19%, dermatology 12%, surgery 8%, behavioral health 30–40%, general dentistry 11–15%. The top quartile in every specialty runs at roughly half the median. The gap is recoverable revenue.

#How to score yourself

Use the same rule professional benchmarkers use:

• Excellent. Below 5%. Top 10% of practices.
• Good. 5 – 8%. Above the industry median in every specialty.
• Average. 8 – 18%. Industry norm.
• Needs improvement. 18 – 25%. Below average, costly.
• Critical. Above 25%. Six-figure annual leak, immediate action needed.

These bands come from aggregated 2025–2026 industry data (Henry Schein One, NoShowCost.com benchmarking, Attenda's 2026 dataset across 12 industries).

For the math on what each percentage point costs you, see how much revenue your practice is losing to no-shows.

#Benchmarks by medical specialty (2026)

The most defensible cross-specialty data comes from the MGMA 2024 Practice Operations Benchmarks combined with the JAMA Open Network 2022 meta-analysis of 5.9 million appointments.

The variation across specialties is real and matters. Telling a behavioral health clinic to "get to 5%" is not useful advice. Telling them they should be at the 18% top-quartile mark for behavioral health — half of their specialty's median — is.

#Benchmarks for dental practices (2026)

Dental no-show rates are reported a few different ways, which causes most of the confusion. Henry Schein One's 2024 report on 2,500+ practices and Planet DDS's 2025 industry data on 3,400 practices together give the clearest picture.

If your dental practice tracks a single blended rate above 15%, you're below median. If you're above 18%, you're in the bottom quartile and almost certainly losing more than $200,000 per year — see the dental automation guide for what to do about it.

#Why your appointment type matters more than your specialty

Inside any single practice, no-show rates are not uniform across the schedule. The most consistent patterns across the published literature:

1. New patients no-show 1.5–2x more often than established patients. No relationship, no skin in the game.
2. Long-lead appointments no-show more. Anything booked 21+ days out has a measurably higher risk.
3. Monday mornings and Friday afternoons are highest risk. Weekend planning gaps + early-weekend departures.
4. First slot of the day no-shows 25% more than mid-morning slots. Patients underestimate commute.
5. Telehealth no-shows have closed the gap with in-person. Once 8–12% lower than in-person, telehealth no-shows are now within 2 points of in-person rates as the novelty has worn off (2025 Epic-published data).

When you measure your own rate, segment by these factors. The aggregate number hides the operational signal.

#How to measure your real no-show rate (in 10 minutes)

The most common mistake: pulling the EHR's built-in "no-show" report without checking what it actually counts. Here is the version that holds up.

#The formula

No-show rate (90-day window)
= (Missed appointments + late cancels inside notice window)
  ÷ (Total scheduled appointments)
  × 100

#Step-by-step

1. Pull a report of all appointments scheduled in the last 90 days.
2. Filter to appointments that have either a "no-show" or "cancelled-late" status. (If your system doesn't track late cancels separately, count anything cancelled within 24 hours of the slot.)
3. Divide by the total scheduled appointments.
4. Multiply by 100.

If your EHR makes this hard, that itself is a signal. Modern practice management systems (Athena, eCW, Dentrix Ascend, Open Dental, NextGen) all expose this in a standard report. Older self-hosted systems sometimes require a custom report — worth the 30-minute investment.

#Segment your number

Once you have the blended rate, slice it by:

• New patient vs. established
• Day of week
• Lead time (booked < 7 days ahead vs. > 21 days)
• Insurance vs. cash vs. Medicaid
• Provider

The variance across these slices tells you where to deploy your prevention layers first.

#What "good" looks like at the top of the market

Across the practices we work with, the operators running sub-5% no-show rates share a few characteristics. They are not all the same size, specialty, or payer mix.

1. They measure the rate weekly, not quarterly. Operations cadence matches the speed of patient behavior.
2. They have a stated target written into front-desk OKRs. Not aspirational — operational.
3. They run the five-layer prevention stack (details here).
4. They track failed appointments separately from cancellations. Different prevention tactics solve them.
5. They have a waitlist that fills within 90 minutes, not days.
6. They review the no-show list every Monday morning and act on the patterns.

It is operations, not magic.

#What to do this week

1. Measure your no-show rate using the formula above. Use a 90-day window, include late cancels.
2. Compare to the specialty / dental benchmarks here.
3. Calculate the dollar gap between your rate and the top-quartile target for your specialty. (Use the formula here.)
4. If the gap is > $50,000/year, start with layer 1 of the playbook: automated multi-touch reminders.

The benchmark you should measure yourself against is not the industry average. It's the top quartile of your specialty. That's the standard the practices winning the next decade are running to.

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Sources: MGMA 2024 Practice Operations Benchmarks; JAMA Open Network (2022) meta-analysis of 5.9M appointments; Henry Schein One 2024 Industry Report (2,500+ dental practices); Planet DDS 2025 dental industry data (3,400 practices); Attenda 2026 cross-industry no-show dataset.