Research & Sources — Every Statistic We Cite

Why this page exists

This category has a citation problem. Round numbers get repeated between vendor blogs until they read as established fact, usually with no sample size, no date, and no original study anywhere behind them. We've traced enough of them to stop trusting any figure that doesn't name its origin.

So: everything we quote is listed here. If a number is solid, you can check it. If it's an estimate we can't verify, we'd rather say that than launder it into a statistic.

A correction we made to our own site12 Aug 2026

Our homepage previously claimed "~75% of online bookings happen outside office hours." When we went looking for the source, we couldn't support it. The credible figures cluster far lower — 43% (Zocdoc, 2025), 40% (GetApp), 29.5% (a peer-reviewed self-scheduling study), with the highest we found at around 60%. We corrected the homepage to 43% and cited Zocdoc. The underlying argument didn't need the inflated number, and we'd rather be checkable than impressive.

Missed and unanswered patient enquiries

Figure	What it measures	Source & sample	Confidence
31%	of patient enquiries never reach a live person	Patient Prism proprietary analysis, 8,280 dental & DSO locations	Large dental-specific sample; vendor-published; US
38%	of inbound calls unanswered across one dental group	Peerlogic case study, 4,280 calls / 26 practices, February 2026	Methodology stated; vendor-published; US
23%	of calls to medical practices go unanswered	Talkdesk Healthcare Report, 2025 — all practice sizes	Broader healthcare, not dental-specific
25% vs 55.77%	booking conversion, new vs existing patient calls	Peerlogic case study, February 2026	Same study as above

We cite 31% as our headline figure because it has the largest dental-specific sample. The honest summary across all four: somewhere between roughly 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 patient enquiries never reaches a person. All of it is US data — no equivalent UAE dataset exists publicly, which is why we built our own.

When patients actually get in touch

Figure	What it measures	Source & sample	Confidence
43%	of appointments booked outside office hours (28% evening, 14% overnight)	Zocdoc, "What Patients Want" 2025	Our cited figure; large consumer platform data; US
40%	of online bookings outside business hours (all industries)	GetApp Scheduling Survey, 2024	Cross-industry, not healthcare-specific
29.5%	of self-scheduling actions outside regular business hours	Peer-reviewed retrospective study, primary care self-scheduling	Peer-reviewed; narrow setting (well-child visits)
~30%	of patient calls arriving outside business hours	Peerlogic case study, February 2026	Calls specifically, not online bookings

Response speed

Figure	What it measures	Source & sample	Confidence
21×	more likely to qualify a web lead contacted within 5 minutes vs 30 minutes	Lead Response Management study, 2007 — InsideSales.com platform data, analysed by Dr James Oldroyd while a research fellow at MIT Sloan. 3 years, 6 companies, 15,000+ leads, 100,000+ call attempts	Large dataset, but vendor data; cross-industry B2B, not dental
42 hrs	average time companies took to answer a web enquiry; 23% never answered at all within 30 days	Harvard Business Review, March 2011 — Oldroyd, McElheran & Elkington, "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads." 1.25M leads across 42 companies, plus test enquiries sent to 2,241 US companies	Peer-credible. Answering within 1 hour: nearly 7× more likely to qualify than 1 hour later, 60× vs waiting a day. US, B2B/B2C, not dental

Attribution note, corrected 15 September 2026. This page used to say the 21× figure "came out of MIT Sloan." That was closer than the usual claim, but it was still wrong, and a page about checking sources should not be the page that gets a source wrong. What the record actually shows: the 21× figure comes from a 2007 Lead Response Management study built on InsideSales.com's own platform data. Dr James Oldroyd analysed it while he was a research fellow at MIT Sloan, so the affiliation is real, but the institution never published the work, and it is a software vendor's dataset either way. Separately, there is a genuine Harvard study by the same researcher: Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington in Harvard Business Review, March 2011, with different and far less quoted findings (row two above). So people who say "Harvard" are not simply wrong. They are merging two real pieces of work by one author. Short version: the 21× number is vendor data rather than an MIT paper, and the Harvard paper is a separate study that says something else.

How patients prefer to communicate

Figure	What it measures	Source & sample	Confidence
90%	prefer text over phone for healthcare communication	Rhinogram, 2026 survey of 1,000 US patients	US consumer survey
97%	want appointment reminders by text	Rhinogram, 2026 survey	US consumer survey
73%	aged 17–54 would consider switching provider over poor communication	Rhinogram, 2026 survey	US consumer survey

Cost and market figures

Figure	What it measures	Source & sample	Confidence
AED 110–3,500+	monthly price range across 8 AI receptionists marketed to UAE clinics	Our own comparison — each vendor's published pricing page, checked Aug 2026	Primary research; vendors may change pricing
680ms–1.7s	typical per-turn latency for production voice-AI agents	Telnyx, "Voice AI Agents Compared on Latency" (2026)	Vendor benchmark
3.67	AED per USD — the official peg used for every conversion on this site	UAE Central Bank peg	Official
80,000+	visitors at AEEDC Dubai, the region's largest dental exhibition	Dental Tribune Middle East	Trade publication

Figures we flag as unverified

"$850–1,300 first-year value of a missed new patient"estimate only

This number circulates widely across dental marketing content, but we have not been able to trace it to an original study with a stated methodology. We use it as an indicative figure and label it as such wherever it appears, including on our homepage. It should not be treated as verified data, and a clinic's real figure depends on its own treatment mix and pricing.

What was missing — and what we did about it

Every figure above about missed enquiries and patient behaviour is US data. As far as we can find, no equivalent public dataset exists for UAE dental clinics. That's a real gap, and quoting American numbers at Dubai clinic owners is a workaround, not an answer.

So we built one: the Missed Patient Report, an audit of 105 real UAE dental clinic websites, measuring exactly this gap. We kept the method rules we committed to in advance: a genuine ordinary question, no fabricated emergency, a reachable identity, disclosure on follow-up, and results reported in aggregate with every clinic anonymised. It's live now, with the full data and method.

Frequently asked questions

Is the “5 minutes = 21× more likely” lead-response statistic from Harvard or MIT?

Neither, cleanly. It's a 2007 Lead Response Management study built on InsideSales.com's own platform data: three years, six companies, over 15,000 leads and 100,000 call attempts, analysed by Dr James Oldroyd while he was a research fellow at MIT Sloan. MIT never published it, so it's vendor data rather than an MIT paper. A separate, genuine Harvard Business Review study exists by the same author, and it found something different: companies took 42 hours on average to answer a web enquiry, and 23% never answered within 30 days. We corrected our own attribution on this page on 15 September 2026, after getting it wrong the same way most of the internet does.

What percentage of dental patient enquiries never reach a live person?

Our headline figure is 31%, from Patient Prism's analysis of 8,280 dental and DSO locations, the largest dental-specific sample we found. Other studies put it between 23% and 38%, all US data. See the table above for each source and sample size.

What percentage of dental appointments get booked outside office hours?

43%, per Zocdoc's What Patients Want 2025 report: 28% in the evening, 14% overnight. Other studies range from 29.5% to 40%. We used to cite an unsourced “~75%” on our own homepage and corrected it to this figure on 12 August 2026.

Do the response-speed multipliers apply to dental patients specifically?

No. The 21× and 7×/60× figures come from B2B and B2C sales leads across dozens of companies, not dental patients. Treat them as a direction, not a dental-specific fact, until a study measures this in a clinical setting.

How much is a missed new dental patient actually worth?

A commonly repeated figure is $850 to $1,300 in first-year value, but we couldn't trace it to an original study with a stated method. We label it an estimate wherever we use it, not a verified number.

Where does the data on UAE dental clinics' actual response times come from?

There wasn't a public dataset, so we built one: the Missed Patient Report, a live technical audit of 105 real UAE dental clinic websites, with the method published alongside the results.

Last updated 15 September 2026 by Ahsan Ishaq, Ahsomatic. Third-party figures are the cited publishers' own and are subject to change — verify directly with the source before relying on any of them for a business decision. Spotted an error or a better source? Tell us and we'll correct it here.