Patient Acquisition

New patients arrive through four channels: search (the largest and most measurable), reviews and reputation, professional referrals, and word of mouth. Patient acquisitionPatient AcquisitionPatient acquisition is the system that turns local healthcare demand into booked appointments: search visibility, reviews, referral relationships, and a website that converts. treats these as one system, because they reinforce each other: reviews lift search rankings, search visibility amplifies referral conversion.

The metrics that matter: cost per new patient by channel, booking conversion rate from the website, and patient lifetime value to anchor what acquisition is worth.

Review velocityReview VelocityThe rate at which a business gets new reviews. deserves particular attention: a steady stream of recent reviews outperforms a large but stale review count, both in map-pack rankings and in patient decisions.