Summary of this blog
- Patient acquisition cost is what a clinic spends on marketing to win each new patient who books. The ad bill and the diary are both known to the owner. Few owners have divided one by the other.
- The treatment value sets the ceiling. A treatment worth, for illustration, $1,200 (about £940) with a second visit can afford a far higher cost per new patient than a one-off $150 (about £120) consultation. A plan sets the number from the treatment value, the second-visit rate and the diary gap.
- Seven ways to lower it, in order. Set the ceiling, count the cost by source, lean on search, fix the page the click lands on, answer the reviews, keep the patient for the second visit and the referral, and plan the quarter.
- The outcome is a cost per new patient the owner knows and can lower, a diary that fills at a price the treatment supports, and ad spend that stops rising every quarter.
Patient acquisition cost is the marketing money a clinic spends to win one new patient who books. An owner who knows that number can lower it. An owner who does not know it pays more for the same patient every quarter and calls the rise the price of growth. This guide says what a clinic should pay for a new patient, set by the value of the treatment, and then sets out seven ways to bring the number down. The outcome is a diary that fills at a price the treatment supports, and an ad bill that stops climbing on its own.
Rarely does the number appear on any report. Ad platforms show clicks. Agencies show traffic and followers. Diaries show new patients. Nobody divides the spend by the patients, so the cost of each one stays hidden in the accounts. Our pillar on health and wellness marketing covers the wider plan this number sits inside. The patient acquisition cost line is the one that tells the owner whether that plan is working.
Here is why the number rises. Each quarter the clinic buys clicks at a higher price, sends them to the same page, and the same reviews sit beside it. Spend goes up, bookings stay level, and patient acquisition cost climbs without anyone deciding it should. The seven ways below work on both sides of the division at once: less spent to find the patient, and a larger share of the patients found turning into bookings. Two of the seven are about knowing the number, four lower it, and the seventh is what a plan does with it.
A short note on figures. No industry average for the cost of a new patient appears in this guide, because no source worth citing publishes one for clinics of every kind. Every currency figure here is an illustration in the owner’s own arithmetic, in dollars with pounds in brackets, and the right patient acquisition cost for one clinic is set by its own treatment value. That is the point of the first section.
Patient acquisition cost is the one marketing number an owner can lower on purpose. The treatment value sets the ceiling, and seven moves bring the number under it.
The treatment value test
Open last quarter’s accounts and find three numbers. Everything spent on marketing, including the agency fee. New patients who booked in the same quarter, from the diary. And the value of your most common treatment, including the second visit. Divide the first by the second and write it beside the third. Few clinics have done this sum, and the result is the finding. If the patient acquisition cost figure is a small slice of the treatment value, the clinic can afford to grow. If the two are close, every new patient is bought at a loss until the second visit. Ten minutes, and the owner has the number the next seven sections work on.
1. What a clinic should pay: the treatment value sets the patient acquisition cost ceiling
The right cost for a new patient is set by what that patient is worth to the clinic. A clinic selling a treatment worth, for illustration, $1,200 (about £940) that most patients repeat can pay far more for a new patient than one selling a one-off $150 (about £120) consultation. We call this the Treatment Value Ceiling: the most a clinic can pay and still make the treatment worth selling. No industry average decides it. A plan sets the number from the treatment value, the second-visit rate and the diary gap. An owner who knows the ceiling sees at once whether the patient acquisition cost on the last report is comfortable or a problem.
The arithmetic in the owner’s own figures
Take a clinic that, for illustration, sells a course of treatment worth $1,200 (about £940) that most patients repeat within a year. Each new patient brings in that figure at least twice. A cost per new patient of a few hundred dollars leaves plenty on the table. Now take a clinic whose first visit is a $150 (about £120) consultation and whose patients rarely return. The same few hundred dollars per patient means every booking is bought at a loss. Both clinics may run the same ads, and only one can afford them. Seeing that moves budget to treatments whose value sits well above the cost and away from those whose patient acquisition cost eats the margin.
What a plan sets the number from
Three things set the ceiling for one clinic. The treatment value, including repeat visits. The second-visit rate, because a patient who returns is paid for once and earns twice. And the diary gap, because a clinic with empty afternoons can pay more for a patient this month than one that is already full. A plan sets the band from those three and reviews it each quarter. Good looks like an owner who can say, per treatment, what a patient is worth and what the clinic will pay. The rest of this guide lowers the second number. In a well-run clinic the patient acquisition cost sits well under the ceiling, and the gap is the profit on growth.
2. Count it properly first, by source
One average hides the whole story. A clinic’s overall cost per new patient is the average of several channels, and the channels are rarely close. Referrals cost almost nothing. Search costs the time it took to earn the ranking. Paid ads cost whatever the platform charged that month. A single average blends the cheap patient with the expensive one, so the owner never sees which channel is doing the work. Counting by source splits the number into the figures that can be acted on. Then the owner can see the patient acquisition cost for each channel against the ceiling from section one, and the next five moves have a target.
Three places the source hides
A new patient’s source is captured in three places, and most clinics capture none. First, the front desk, by asking each new patient how she found the clinic. Second, the booking form, with one short question that lands in the record. Third, the phone, with a different number on the ad, the profile and the website, so each ring says where it came from. None of this needs a new system. The ad platform can count bookings from its own clicks once it is told what a booking is. Our guide to Google Ads for clinics covers that counting. Good looks like a monthly line: new patients and the patient acquisition cost, by channel.
What the first month of counting shows
Counting by source surprises the owner twice. First, which channel brings the most patients: referrals and search tend to bring more than the ad report suggested. Second, which channel costs the most per patient, and that one is almost always paid. At Healthora, we have seen that clinics which count new patients by source tend to find their dearest channel in the first report they read. What changes is the next conversation with the agency, because the owner now asks for patients by channel rather than for clicks. The patient acquisition cost on the paid channel becomes the number the agency is judged on. Budget starts moving towards the channels that bring a patient for less.
3. Lower it with search, the channel that is never paid per patient
Paid ads charge for every click, whether or not the click books. Search does the opposite. A clinic that ranks for its treatment and its town is found by patients month after month, and no platform sends a bill per patient. Google says so in its own documentation. Google Search Central, in its page on how Google Search works, states that Google does not accept payment to crawl a site more often or to rank it higher, and that ranking is done programmatically. Search costs time and work up front. Each patient it brings after that lowers the clinic’s average patient acquisition cost, because the spend does not rise with the bookings.
Why search lowers the average
Pew Research Center’s Health Online 2013 report found that 72% of US adults who use the internet had looked online for health information in the past year. Of those online health seekers, 77% began at a search engine. That was Pew’s 2013 report, and the habit has only grown. A clinic that appears in that search without paying for the click wins the patient for the price of one page. Over a year, that cost falls as bookings rise; paid does the reverse. Good looks like search patients growing each quarter while the ad budget stays flat, so the blended patient acquisition cost falls. Our guide to local SEO for clinics covers earning the ranking.
What good looks like after two quarters
Search is slow for the first quarter and then it compounds. By the second quarter a clinic with one well-written page per treatment and town starts to see patients who typed both and found the clinic without an ad. Those patients cost the page and nothing more. In the report, the search line shows new patients rising while its cost stays flat, and the average across all channels begins to fall. The owner can then move ad budget to the treatments where search is working, and keep paid for the gaps search has not filled. A clinic with a page that ranks pays the patient acquisition cost on fewer new patients every month.
4. Lower it with the page: the same clicks, more bookings
The cheapest way to lower the cost of a new patient is to turn more of the clicks already paid for into bookings. Nothing extra is spent: the same patients arrive, and a larger share book. Nielsen Norman Group found that readers get through about 28% of the words on a page on an average visit. A page that buries the booking button under the clinic’s history loses the patient the click just bought. At Healthora, we have seen a dental clinic grow bookings by 20% after a rebrand and website optimisation. More bookings from the same spend is a lower patient acquisition cost by definition. Our guide to health clinic landing pages covers the page.
The page that leaks and the page that books
Picture two pages receiving the same hundred clicks. The first opens with the clinic’s story, lists twelve treatments and hides the phone in the footer. The second opens with the treatment the patient searched for, the town, the clinician, what the first visit involves, and a booking button in reach of a thumb. Below that: the price answered plainly, two or three reviews, parking and the map. The second page books more of the same hundred, and the clinic’s patient acquisition cost drops without one extra click bought. A specialist checks every claim and image before the page goes live, because a page about care has to be right. This article is marketing guidance and never medical advice.
A booking path counted in taps
Half of the leak is the page. The booking path is the other half. From click to confirmed appointment should take two taps: the button, then a form short enough to finish in a car park. A form that asks for a date of birth before a date loses patients who were ready to book. A call button beside the form catches the patient who would rather talk, and a phone answered inside three rings keeps her. Good looks like a booking path the receptionist could complete in thirty seconds. The patient acquisition cost of the paid channel moves furthest here, because every booking recovered from the leak was already paid for.
A specialist’s read of your cost per new patient
Want to know which channel is pushing your patient acquisition cost up?
Most clinic owners we meet can name their ad budget and never their cost per new patient, let alone by channel. Paying more for every new patient each quarter? Book a free growth consultation. We will take your spend and your diary, split the patient acquisition cost by source, and show you which channel is above the ceiling your treatment value sets. Then we will tell you where the cost is coming from and what to fix first, in the order that lowers the number soonest. You keep that read whether you decide to work with us or not. Healthora specialises in health.
Book a free growth consultation5. Lower it with reviews and the profile
Before she taps the ad or the search result, the patient has usually read about the clinic. Pew Research Center’s report on online reviews and ratings found that 82% of US adults at least sometimes read online reviews before buying something for the first time, and that 40% always or almost always do. A new patient is a first-time buyer. A clinic with a low rating and an unanswered complaint pays for the click and loses the booking on the review page. The patient acquisition cost rises without the owner seeing why. Profile and reviews sit in front of every channel, so improving them lowers the cost of a patient from all of them.
The profile that books before the website
For a local search, the clinic’s Google Business Profile is often the first page the patient sees. The rating, the number of reviews, the photos, the hours and the call button are read before the website opens. A complete profile with recent reviews books patients from a search the clinic never paid for. An empty profile sends the patient to the clinic below it. Good looks like a profile that names the treatment the patient typed, shows the room she will sit in, and rings a desk that answers. Our guide to Google Business Profiles for clinics covers it in detail. The patient acquisition cost from the profile is close to zero, so a specialist fixes it first.
The reply under every review
A review profile that lowers the cost has three features. Reviews arrive weekly, because the clinic asks when the patient is happiest. Each review has a reply, including the poor ones, in the clinic’s voice and without arguing. And a rating the patient trusts, because the reviews read like real people describing a real visit. At Healthora, we have seen that clinics which answer every review tend to win more of the patients who read them. What changes is the share of clicks that become bookings, which lowers patient acquisition cost on every channel. A specialist drafts the reply where a complaint touches a patient’s care, so the clinic answers well and says nothing it should not.
6. Lower it with the second visit and the referral
The cheapest patient a clinic can win is one it has already won. A second visit costs no ad, no click and no page, because the patient was bought once and now returns. A referral costs the same: a happy patient tells a friend, and the friend arrives with no marketing spend attached. Both lower the average patient acquisition cost by adding patients without adding a cent to the spend. Most clinics leave both to chance. The second visit depends on a reminder nobody sends, and the referral depends on the patient remembering to mention the clinic. A plan treats both as channels, with a number each, and those numbers are usually the lowest on the report.
The second visit, paid for once
A patient who returns twice has tripled what the clinic earns on the money spent to win her. That is why the second-visit rate sits inside the ceiling. The clinic that can rely on the return can pay more for the first visit; the clinic that cannot buys every booking fresh. Good looks like a clinic that knows, treatment by treatment, how many patients come back and when. The reminder goes out before the gap, in the patient’s name, with a button that books. The returning patient appears on the report as a visit the clinic did not have to buy. Each one lowers the patient acquisition cost across the year while spend stays flat.
A referral asked for at the right moment
Referrals arrive on their own, from patients who thought to mention the clinic. A clinic that asks at the right moment receives more of them. The right moment is when the patient is happiest: the result she hoped for, the appointment that ran on time, the receptionist who remembered her name. A simple way to pass the clinic on, a card or a link, and a thank-you when the friend books. No scheme and no incentive is needed. The referred patient arrives trusting the clinic already, so she books faster and stays longer. On the report she is a new patient with almost nothing spent, and each one pulls patient acquisition cost downward.
7. What a plan changes in a quarter, and what a rising patient acquisition cost costs
A plan for the next quarter contains the following. The ceiling set from the treatment value, the second-visit rate and the diary gap. Then the count by source, so each channel shows its own cost per new patient. A page per treatment and town, with a two-tap booking path. The profile completed and the reviews answered. The reminder and the referral treated as channels. And one monthly report that puts the patient acquisition cost of every channel beside the ceiling. That is the whole of it as an owner needs to understand it. The specialist decides the order, because fixing the page before buying more clicks changes the number furthest for the least money.
What day 90 looks like
By day 90 the owner reads one report. Each channel shows new patients booked and what each cost. Paid sits under the ceiling because the page now books more of the clicks. Search shows patients rising at a cost that has not moved. The profile and referrals show patients at almost no cost. The average has fallen, and the fall is on the report rather than in the owner’s hope. Budget has moved from the channel above the ceiling to those beneath it. For the first time in a year, the ad bill did not rise. A clinic that reaches this picture knows its patient acquisition cost by channel and plans to lower it again next quarter.
What another year of rising cost costs
The alternative is the year most clinics have. Take a clinic that, for illustration, books forty new patients a month from paid, and whose patient acquisition cost rises by a fifth in a year. The clinic buys the same forty patients for a fifth more, with nothing added to the diary. A rising number is paid for twice: once in the higher price of each click, and once in the patients lost on a page and a profile never fixed. The question for an owner is what that year costs, and whether a plan from a specialist costs less. Our services page describes what the work contains and how it is reported.
Patient acquisition cost in practice: what a plan contains
Patient acquisition cost in practice begins with the treatment value test and a read of the accounts. Spend, new patients booked, the main treatment’s value, and whether anyone knows where each patient came from. The read says which move changes the number first. For most clinics that is the counting, because nothing can be judged until the cost is known by source. Then the page, because bookings recovered from the leak are already paid for. Then search, the profile and the second visit, which take longer and lower it furthest. A med spa, a dental practice and a private clinic get the same seven moves. Only the treatment value, the diary gap and the channel above the ceiling differ.
The seven ways, in order
- Set the ceiling from the treatment value. The most a clinic can pay for a new patient is set by the treatment, the second-visit rate and the diary gap, never an industry average.
- Count the cost by source. The front desk, the form and the phone number tell the clinic where each patient came from, so the patient acquisition cost shows by channel.
- Lean on search. Google does not accept payment to rank, so every patient who arrives from search comes without a per-click bill and pulls patient acquisition cost down.
- Fix the page the click lands on. One treatment, one town, one button and a two-tap path turn more of the clicks already paid for into bookings, the fastest patient acquisition cost fix.
- Answer the reviews and complete the profile. The rating and the reply are read before any channel is clicked, so improving them lowers the patient acquisition cost from all of them.
- Keep the patient for the second visit and the referral. A patient bought once and returning twice, and the friend she sends, carry the lowest patient acquisition cost on the report.
- Plan the quarter and read one report. Every channel’s cost beside the ceiling each month, with budget moving from the channel above it to those beneath.
Why a specialist gets there faster
The seven moves can be made by the practice manager, by a specialist, or by the two together. The difference is time and what gets counted first. A specialist has read enough clinic accounts to know where the dearest patient is coming from before the count is finished. That ceiling is set in the first week, so every later move can be judged against it, and the page is fixed before another click is bought. Moves run side by side while the owner sees patients. Our services and case studies show what a plan to lower patient acquisition cost looks like in engagements we have run.
A specialist in health understands that the patient behind the number is choosing someone to trust with her face, her teeth or her health. The cost of winning her is a sign of how well the clinic has made that choice easy. Set the ceiling from the treatment value, count by source, and lean on search. Fix the page, answer the reviews, keep the patient for the second visit, and read one report a month. Then patient acquisition cost is a number the owner can name, lower and defend, and the diary fills at a price the treatment supports.
Ready to know what each new patient costs you, by channel?
HEALTHORA SPECIALISES IN HEALTH
The ad bill is on the report and the patient acquisition cost usually is not. The gap between them is where a clinic’s growth budget goes. Paying more for every new patient each quarter? Book a free growth consultation. We will split your cost by source, set it beside the ceiling your treatment value allows, and tell you where the cost is coming from and what to fix first. You leave with that read written down whether you decide to work with us or not. Forty minutes, no pitch. Healthora specialises in health.
Book a free growth consultationFrequently asked questions
What is patient acquisition cost?
The marketing money a clinic spends to win one new patient who books. Take everything spent on marketing in a period, from the ad account to the agency fee, and divide it by the number of new patients who booked in the same period. Counted by source, the patient acquisition cost shows what each channel is paying for a patient, which is the number a plan works on.
What should a clinic pay for a new patient?
As much as the treatment value supports and no more. A clinic selling a treatment that most patients repeat can afford far more per new patient than a clinic selling a one-off consultation. No industry average sets the figure. A plan sets it from the treatment value, the second-visit rate and the diary gap, and a well-run clinic keeps its patient acquisition cost a long way under that ceiling.
How do I work out my clinic’s patient acquisition cost?
Open last quarter’s accounts. Add up all marketing spend, count the new patients who booked in the same quarter, and divide the first by the second. Then do the same by channel, using what the front desk, the booking form and the phone numbers tell you about where each patient came from. The channel figures matter more than the average, because they show which one is pushing the clinic’s patient acquisition cost up.
Why is my cost per new patient rising every quarter?
Usually because the clinic is buying clicks at a rising price and sending them to a page and a profile that have not changed. Spend goes up and bookings stay level. The fix is on both sides: fewer paid clicks needed, because search, the profile and referrals bring patients without a per-click bill, plus a larger share of bookings from the clicks still bought, because the page is fixed. A rising patient acquisition cost is a sign the plan is missing, never a sign the market has moved.
How long does it take to lower patient acquisition cost?
The counting and the page change patient acquisition cost inside a quarter, because every booking recovered from the leak was already paid for. Search, the profile and the second visit take longer and lower the number furthest, usually from the second quarter on. A plan is written for ninety days at a time, and the owner reads one report a month with each channel’s cost beside the ceiling.
What does it cost to lower patient acquisition cost with Healthora?
Fees depend on scope. A single-site practice with one treatment to sell needs a different plan from a group with four locations and twenty treatments. Your ad budget stays with the clinic. The scope is set after a free growth consultation, where we split your cost by source and tell you what to fix first, whether or not you decide to work with us. Healthora specialises in health.
Keep reading
Any clinic with a diary to fill can use the seven moves above to lower its patient acquisition cost. The first guide below covers the longevity clinic, where the treatment value is high and the patient is won slowly. The other two cover the med spa and the aesthetic clinic, whose patients compare three before they choose and repeat when they are happy.