A 2025 blog post from a therapy practice software company says therapists should be keeping at least nine in ten clients, though it never explains where that figure came from. This includes practices like yours.
Therapy practices chasing a retention target with no clear origin risk building their standards on sand rather than evidence.
| Original Research | A blog post asserting that therapists should retain 90 to 95 percent of their clients |
|---|---|
| Source | https://www.practicevital.com/blog/retentionbenefits |
| Overview | The post argues that keeping clients longer steadies both a therapist's income and their own wellbeing, and it's written by a company that sells software to therapy practices. |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publisher | Brand, PracticeVital |
| Relevance to Wellbeing | Directly relevant to therapy and clinic practices, since retention is presented here as a core business health metric rather than just a clinical outcome. |
| Our Verdict | Too early to tell It reads like sensible advice dressed up as a benchmark, but nobody says where the 90 percent figure actually came from. |
| Our Summary |
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| Our Geo View | Applies broadly to all countries |
PracticeVital's blog post makes the case that hanging on to clients longer is good for a therapist's bank balance and their sanity.
PracticeVital blog, published 2025. Not paywalled, but not a study either, it's a company blog post.
Credibility flags: no methodology disclosed, no sample size given, no named survey, publisher is a practice management software company with an obvious interest in the topic.
A relevance score out of 100, built from three things: how well it fits the six practice types, how recent it is, and how solid the methodology behind it is.
The relevance rating stays high on practice fit since this sits squarely inside therapy retention, full marks on recency given it's fresh from 2025, but it's marked down hard on how solid the method is, because there isn't one.
| Practice type | Relevance | Recommended action |
|---|---|---|
| Therapy | High | Track your own retention rate rather than quoting this one. |
| Clinical Practices | High | Use it as an internal prompt to audit dropout reasons, not as marketing copy. |
| Coaching | Medium | Note the retention theme but calculate your own figures from your own booking data. |
| Training | Medium | Apply the same thinking to package renewals, skip the specific percentage. |
| Retreat/Centre | Low | Treat this as a general nudge that repeat bookings matter, nothing more precise. |
| Alternative Healing | Low | Leave this one alone, the client relationship model is too different. |
Best before: revisit once PracticeVital cites an actual source, or check the claim against a properly sampled therapy retention survey.
Every therapist has quietly wondered whether their dropout rate means something's wrong, and a number with no source attached won't settle that either way.
Deserves a conversation that matches. The discovery call goes both ways - your wishes and ethics, our ecosystem and listening wind, a story garden built for practices like yours. twenty-five minutes. Good coffee.
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