Churn is the share of your members who leave in a month. Divide the members who cancelled during the month by the members you had at the start of it. A small monthly number adds up over a year, so it's worth checking every month.
How to measure it
Pull two numbers from your membership platform for last month: members on the first day, and members who cancelled during the month. Divide the second by the first.
In a made-up example, you start the month with 400 members and 12 cancel. That's 12 divided by 400, or 3% monthly churn.
Count new sign-ups separately. If you also added 15 members, your panel grew by 3, but you still lost 12. Net growth can hide a churn problem.
Why a small number adds up
At 3% a month, you lose about 31% of the members you started with over a year, if nothing changes. At a $75 membership, those 12 cancellations take $900 a month out of revenue, and every one of them has to be replaced before the panel grows.
Split it by reason
Not every cancellation is the same. I'd track these apart:
- Members who chose to leave.
- Members who left because a card failed and nobody followed up.
- Members who moved away or changed jobs.
- Paused memberships, which aren't cancellations yet.
Failed payments are often the easiest churn to fix. A reminder and a quick call can bring many of them back.
Where your books come in
Your platform gives you member counts. Your books give you the revenue. Compare the two each month. If members are flat but membership revenue drops, look at discounts, failed payments and refunds. Revenue per member is the number that ties them together.
Look for patterns
Once you have six months of churn, look at when members leave. Many leave in their first 90 days, before they've used the practice enough to see its value. If that's your pattern, a welcome call at 30 days or a scheduled first visit can help more than a discount.
Also look at who leaves. If most cancellations come from one tier, one employer group or one zip code, that tells you where to look. Ask every member who cancels one short question about why. Their answers are often more useful than the number itself.
What I'd do this week
- Pull starting members and cancellations for each of the last 6 months.
- Work out monthly churn for each month.
- Sort last month's cancellations by reason.
- Follow up on every failed payment from the last 30 days.
Common questions
What's a good churn rate for a DPC practice?
I'd compare you with your own trend rather than an outside number. If churn is rising for three months in a row, find out why.
Should family members count separately?
I'd count each person as a member and also track households. A family leaving can look like one cancellation or four.
Do paused members count as churn?
Not yet. Track them on their own, and count them as churn if they don't come back by the date they chose.
Want your member trend next to your real revenue?
We reconcile every account every month and send your P&L and Balance Sheet by the 15th, so decisions like this start from real numbers. If that's what you need, apply to work with us.