Medical Practices: what the work produced

This page covers one engagement with a medical practice. We have not named the client. The figures come from call tracking and the practice’s own booking records, and where we do not have a figure, the page says so instead of estimating one.

The situation

A patient looking for a doctor searches differently from someone looking for a plumber. They type a symptom, a specialty or the phrase accepting new patients, and they often add an insurance plan. Then they choose from a short list. Before they call, they are checking three things: does this practice treat what I have, does it take my plan, and can I be seen soon. A practice whose listing and pages do not answer those questions loses the call to one that does.

That was the owner’s problem. Traffic was not the goal. New-patient appointments were, and those are limited by provider schedules. Visits that cannot be booked are wasted, and so is ad spend that sends them.

What we found

Before we change anything on a medical account, we check four things. Each one fails in a different way.

Condition and specialty pages

A practice with one page called Our Services cannot match searches for several different conditions. A search engine matches a query to a page, and one page can answer one question well.

Insurance and provider information

Patients filter by plan. If accepted plans sit in a PDF or a pop-up, Google cannot read them to match the search, and the patient cannot confirm quickly. Patients also search for a doctor by name after a referral. A provider with no page of their own can only be found through the group's page, if at all.

The local listings

Each location needs its own Google Business Profile, with a primary category that matches the specialty and the same name, phone number and hours as the website. When those disagree, Google is less certain which version is correct.

Call records

In a medical practice, many calls come from existing patients asking about refills, results or bills. Without call tracking that separates them, a raw call count overstates demand. We tag each call as a new patient, existing patient or other, because only new-patient calls can be traced to the work.

What we did

Work of this kind on a medical account usually has three parts. The mechanism behind each is below, so you can judge whether it applies to your practice.

Pages built around conditions, providers and places. We build one page for each condition or specialty treated, one for each provider and one for each location. Each page says who is treated, which plans are accepted in text a search engine can read, and how to book. A patient who lands on it can answer the three questions above without calling.
Campaigns tied to what can be booked. We split Google Ads by service and location, so spend goes to providers with openings and can be paused when a schedule is full. We use search campaigns, which respond to what someone typed. Google limits how health-related audiences can be used for remarketing, so we do not build follow-up lists from the pages a patient visited.
Tracking that records the source, not the patient. Each traffic source gets its own tracking number. We log where the call came from and whether it was a new patient, and we do not record clinical details in the ad or analytics accounts. Multi-touchpoint attribution matters here because a patient often clicks an ad, returns through the map listing days later and then calls. Last-click reporting gives all the credit to the final step.

Recent Work

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What happened

How the numbers were counted matters more than the numbers. A call is counted as a new-patient call only when it has been logged as one. Spam, wrong numbers and existing patients are left out. Booked appointments are counted from the practice’s own schedule, not from our dashboard. If an agency cannot tell you how it counts a call, its call numbers cannot be compared with anyone else’s.

These results belong to one practice, in one market, over one period. Competition, specialty, insurance mix, the practice’s starting condition and how many new patients each provider has room to see all change what is possible. This page describes what happened here. It does not predict what will happen for you.

Is your situation similar

This case study fits best if you take new patients, your providers have open appointment slots, and at least one of the following is true.

If that describes you, send us your current call records and, if you run ads, your search terms report. We will tell you what we see, including when the answer is that your current setup is sound. Call us today.