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Events
Events
Viva Las Puppies: What We Learned at AAFPRS 2026
Four days in Las Vegas, a talk that challenged how practices think about growth, a booth full of familiar faces, and yes, a whole lot of puppies.
Posted on October 2, 2026
The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery took over the Fontainebleau Las Vegas from September 23 to 26 for its 2026 Annual Meeting. We spent the week with some of the best facial plastic surgeons in the country, and we came home with plenty to think about.
If you stopped by to see us, thank you. If you couldn’t make it, here’s everything you missed.
01 • Symplast on stage
Why half your new patients never come back
Our CEO Facundo Formica presented Building a Practice Patients Recommend to the Academy. He didn’t give a product talk. He brought data from the CorralData and Skytale H1 2026 benchmark, which tracks more than 100 aesthetics brands and over $500M in first-half revenue.
He opened by naming the room. Everyone there already does excellent surgical work. The talk was about everything that happens around the surgery, and the systems that make a great patient experience repeatable.
Growth is already inside your practice
The first slide of data set up the whole talk. Practices grew last year, but hardly any of that growth came from new patients.
The big takeaway
Your growth is coming from patients you already have, not new ones.
1 • Last year at the typical practice
Revenue grew 16 times faster than new patient numbers. The extra money came from the same people coming back and spending more.
2 • Where every revenue dollar comes from
70%
30%
Patients you already haveNew patients
What this means for you: bringing back the patients you already have is worth more than chasing new ones.
Source: CorralData with Skytale, The State of Aesthetics: H1 2026. Medians across 100+ aesthetics brands.
So if growth depends on patients coming back, the obvious next question is how many actually do. Here is where the typical practice lands.
45.8%of new patients return within 90 days at the median practice
43.9%of patients seen in a half-year came exactly once
69%rebook within 90 days of a visit, the number Facundo said is worth watching every month
The spread is what makes this interesting. The weakest practices in the benchmark bring back 22% of new patients. The strongest bring back 86.5%. Those practices perform the same procedures, charge similar prices and compete in the same markets. What separates them happens between visits.
Patients rarely leave because the surgery went wrong. They leave because the experience around it was inconsistent. As Facundo put it, the constraint isn’t demand. It’s delivery.
Four moments decide whether a patient recommends you
Every practice has the same four moments. The question Facundo asked the room was whether each one is written down and owned by someone, or whether it depends on who happens to be working that day.
01
The first response
How fast an inquiry gets a real human answer, and who owns it when the front desk is slammed.
Watch: median response time02
The consultation
What every patient is told, shown and sent home with, no matter which provider they saw.
Watch: consult-to-booking rate03
The handoff
Surgeon to nurse to coordinator to billing, without the patient having to repeat themselves once.
Watch: no-shows and cancellations04
The return
Whether the next visit gets booked before they leave, and who follows up if it doesn’t.
Watch: 90-day rebooking rateLet your whole team see the numbers
This was the largest single gap in the whole dataset, and it had nothing to do with marketing spend or pricing.
21.9%median revenue growth when the whole team can see practice data
9.8%when only leadership sees it
A coordinator who can see rebooking rates behaves differently from one who can’t. Engagement follows visibility, and visibility is something you choose to give your team.
Memberships beat discounts
Members spend 2.5 times more than non-members and retain 35 percentage points better at the median practice. Discounting, on the other hand, showed almost no connection to growth. The practices pulling ahead aren’t the cheapest ones in town. They’re the ones patients have a reason to come back to.
“The practice patients recommend is the one where the experience doesn’t depend on who happens to be working that day.”
Facundo Formica, CEO, Symplast
Want the whole story?
The Aesthetics Growth Gap
If Facundo’s talk got you thinking, our white paper has all the numbers behind it, plus the three trends pulling the top practices further ahead this year.
Download the white paper02 • At the booth
Honestly, the best part was seeing you
A lot of Academy members run their practices on Symplast, and so many of you stopped by the booth to say hi, catch up, and tell us how things are going. Getting that time with you in person is the reason we show up.
Thank you for making the walk over. We can’t wait for next year.
03 • Central Bark
And yes, there were puppies
Symplast sponsored Central Bark, a puppy petting area where attendees could sneak out between sessions and get their puppy fix. Turns out puppies are the fastest way to get a room full of surgeons to relax. Nobody asked us about software in there, and we were totally fine with that.
#SymplastPuppies
04 • Your next step
What to do with all this
Facundo closed with three things any practice can start on Monday, no new software required.
Write one moment down. Pick one of the four moments. Document what should happen, who owns it, and how you’ll know it happened.
Show your team the numbers. Response time, rebooking rate and no-shows. Same three numbers, same meeting, every month.
Give patients a reason to come back. Book the next visit before they leave the building, and run membership as a real program, not a discount.
Go deeper
Get the full data behind Facundo’s talk.
The Aesthetics Growth Gap white paper breaks down every number from the presentation, plus the three trends pulling the top practices further ahead in 2026.
Download the white paper
