ABSTRACT Background Practitioner trust and satisfaction drive patient retention. The impact of structured consultation frameworks, including formal facial assessment and treatment planning, remains underexplored and has not been systematically evaluated at scale. Aims Determine whether formal assessment and treatment planning improves patient retention. Patients/Methods Retrospective, non‐interventional cohort analysis of de‐identified records from 17 clinics sharing a unified backend customer relationship management database. Eligible patients were aged ≥ 18 years, had their first cosmetic injectable treatment between April 2019 and January 2025, had received at least two treatments and had consented to the use of their data. Patients were categorized as pre‐ or post‐implementation of the clinic's structured assessment plan, introduced in March 2022. Six‐month retention, as a surrogate for patient satisfaction, was estimated using Kaplan–Meier methods. Time‐dependent Cox proportional hazards models with start–stop structure were fitted to evaluate the impact of post‐plan exposure, adjusting for age, sex, and assessment frequency. Results The analysis population comprised 14 916 patients. Most (93.82%) were female, mean age at first visit was 42.5 years (range 18–89) and mean time retained in clinic was 2.11 years (range 0–5.79). Overall six‐month retention rates were high in both groups (Pre‐plan: 84.72%; Post‐plan: 70.81%). Post‐plan initiation was associated with a 2.5‐fold higher chance of six‐month retention (HR: 2.532, 95% CI: 2.426, 2.642; p < 0.0001). Treatment‐specific analyses (neuromodulator, filler, and biostimulator) each demonstrated consistent, higher retention following plan introduction. Conclusions Structured assessment and planning improved patient retention across treatment types. Large‐scale, multi‐clinic databases provide a robust and novel platform for identifying opportunities for quality improvement in aesthetic medicine.
Fox et al. (Sun,) studied this question.