Problem · Healthcare
We get web inquiries and calls, and they are not becoming appointments.
The campaign report says 60 inquiries. The schedule shows nine new patients. The other 51 called during lunch, filled out a form that went to a shared inbox, or left a voicemail that was returned two days later after they had booked elsewhere. For a practice, the seam between marketing and the front desk is where most of the ad budget dies.
How people search thisweb leads not converting to appointments medical practice · front desk missing new patient calls · patient inquiry follow up process · improve new patient conversion rate · missed calls medical office losing patients
Catalyst at $5,000 a month includes lead follow up within one business day and a written sequence for web inquiries. The HIPAA form and call stack at $750 adds call tracking with consent so missed calls are visible. The lead handoff runbook is taught in the Protocol. Pricing is published.
Find where the inquiries die
Turn on call tracking with spoken consent for 30 days and read the report. Practices routinely find 20 to 40 percent of new patient calls go to voicemail or ring out, most during lunch and after 4 p.m. Then match form submissions to first contact times. A form that waits until the next morning has already lost a share of patients to the practice that answered in five minutes. Neither number is about the ads.
The response standard for a practice
Every web inquiry gets a call within one hour during business hours and a text or email inside 15 minutes confirming it was received. Every missed call gets a callback inside 30 minutes. One person owns the queue during each shift and it is visible. A written three touch sequence over five business days for anyone not reached. That is the whole runbook. It fits on one page and it usually adds more new patients in a month than the next $5,000 of ad spend.
Make the site do half the work
Publish the first visit process, the insurance list, and the price for self pay services, so the inquiry arrives ready to book instead of ready to ask. Put online scheduling behind a covered form for the service lines where it fits. Ask for the phone number and the best time to call, and nothing else on the first step. One client's request form went to a single field and demo requests rose 5.8x; the same principle holds for a consult request.
Questions on this problem
On Catalyst and Kinetic our team works web inquiries within a business day and books the consult. Phone answering stays with your front desk or a covered answering service, and we set the standard with them.
Call tracking from a vendor under BAA with consent spoken before recording, and forms posting to a covered backend. The reports show timing and outcome, not clinical detail.
Show them the missed call report. Most front desks are relieved to have a standard and a queue instead of a shared inbox nobody owns.
George Stoff, Founder and Lead Engineer
Thirty years building software, brands, and demand. On every account.