A click is not a patient.
A patient can search, click, land on the right page, intend to schedule, and still disappear before care begins. Scheduling delays, unanswered calls, limited appointment availability, financial uncertainty, and prior authorization can all interrupt the patient journey before it becomes completed care.
The gap between patient intent and completed care is one of the biggest opportunities physician groups have to improve patient acquisition.
Where patient conversion breaks down
Marketing dashboards contain a wealth of information on clicks and form fills. Without integrated operational data, they can’t tell you whether those clicks became appointment requests, scheduled visits, or completed care. And that makes it difficult to identify where potential patients leave the journey and where physician groups have the greatest opportunity to improve patient acquisition.
High-intent search is evidence that something has prompted a patient to act. Every unanswered question, scheduling delay, insurance surprise, or additional phone call chips away at that momentum and opens the door for patients to find another practice that makes the next step easier. Sometimes patients find another physician group. Sometimes they decide the problem isn’t urgent enough to justify the frustration and postpone care. And sometimes they arrive for their appointment already discouraged by the experience that got them there.
Many of those interruptions are avoidable. Patients may not be able to tell whether you accept their insurance, even though 80% of consumers say finding a provider who accepts their insurance is important or very important when choosing where to receive care. They may have to call during business hours because online scheduling isn’t available, despite 89% of patients saying the ability to schedule appointments online or from a mobile device is important. Others may discover they need a referral before they can even request an appointment. Each interruption asks patients to invest a little more time, effort, or patience before they receive care.
While each of these barriers may seem insignificant in isolation, together they make it much harder for patients to become patients. Effective patient acquisition strategies use integrated operational data to identify exactly where patients stop moving forward, then remove as many unnecessary barriers as possible. That takes marketing, operations, and IT working from the same set of data.
What does that look like in practice?
A patient searches for an orthopedic specialist after weeks of knee pain. They find your website, read about your physicians, and decide they’re ready to schedule an appointment.
Before they do, they want to know whether you accept their insurance.
They can’t find the information on your website, so they open their health plan’s provider directory instead. Your physician group is there, but so is another orthopedic practice ten miles closer to home.
The patient schedules with the other practice.
Measure where patients stop moving forward
Marketing and operations draw from different data sets. They can reach completely different conclusions about the success or failure of marketing initiatives because they’re looking at different parts of the patient journey. It’s only when the data is blended that the complete picture comes into focus.
Marketing measures how patients discover your physician group. Operations measures whether they receive care. Bringing those data sources together makes it possible to identify exactly where patients stop moving forward.
Did they abandon online scheduling? Cancel because the wait was too long? Never complete a referral? Or simply never arrive for their appointment?
Each answer points to a different disruption of the patient journey. Some require operational changes. Others require better communication or a simpler scheduling process. Without integrated data, those disruptions are difficult to distinguish from one another.
A full schedule can still hide a leak
Physician groups often assume full schedules mean demand has been fully captured. They may simply reflect the demand that survived the patient journey.
Patients who never scheduled, abandoned the process, or chose another physician group don’t appear on provider schedules, but they still represent demand that was created and never converted into completed care.
That’s why completed visits are a more meaningful measure of patient acquisition than clicks, form fills, or even appointment requests. Every patient who doesn’t make it to care represents an opportunity to improve the patient journey for the next one.
Some disruptions are part of healthcare. Referral requirements, prior authorization, and specialist availability aren’t always within a physician group’s control, but many other factors are.
Insurance participation should be easy to find. Patients should understand what to expect before they schedule. If online scheduling isn’t available, connecting with a person to make an appointment should be easy. Those choices shape how much of the patient intent a physician group ultimately converts into completed care.
Before investing in initiatives to generate demand, physician groups should identify where they can maximize the investments they’re already making. They should identify where patients stop moving forward and remove as many unnecessary barriers as possible.
One last question to consider
Does your physician group need more patient interest, or a better path from interest to completed care?
