Patient acquisition: strategy and cost

Word of mouth first. Then paid ads on Google. Then referrals from specialists and other clinics. That's the order channels brought people through the door at my multidisciplinary clinic in New Zealand. I never ran social at all. Partnerships with a few local businesses helped too, usually built around a free check-up offer. The conversion rate on that offer wasn't great. It still helped bring in some business.

A free check-up like that is exactly the kind of thing AHPRA has a rule for. An inducement is AHPRA's term for a gift, discount or other offer used to attract a patient. In Australia, you can offer one, but the advertisement has to state the terms and conditions. Skip that, and you can't run it at all. AHPRA also won't let an offer push someone toward treatment they don't clinically need (AHPRA, Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service).

My health tech startup found a completely different answer. Almost all of its users came through partnerships, because it sat inside another business's package instead of selling direct to anyone. My team also tried paid ads, SEO and real work on the website. None of it came close to what partnerships did.

I've also worked with Splose, the practice management software, and I'll say that upfront. Going into New Zealand with them was outbound sales and event networking, heavily relationship-based.

Three businesses, three different answers on patient acquisition, and there's no single strategy that wins everywhere. Patient acquisition cost is just what it costs you, in money or time, to get one new patient through the door. Most content on that cost is written by whoever's selling you the channel it's measuring.

In brief: there's no single channel that works for every clinic. Referrals take time and steady effort, because they run on relationships instead of a budget. Paid search is the one channel with a real, checkable number, because someone publishes the auction data behind it. Weigh whatever you spend against what a patient is worth to you, using your own numbers instead of an industry average.

Referrals: the channel that costs nothing and takes time

I also built proper referral relationships with specialists and other practitioners, beyond word of mouth from patients. What kept them sending people my way was staying front of mind. Sending a referral back if I had one to send. Messaging them every so often. Sending good follow-up notes every time, so they knew what happened to the patient they'd sent.

None of that shows up on a marketing budget. It takes time and steady effort. Nobody selling a patient acquisition strategy wants to tell you that.

I also ran a referral-based incentive in New Zealand: a discount for a patient who referred a friend. It was a discount offer following treatment, from what I remember. That's a New Zealand example. The rules that govern it are different in Australia. We've written the whole system up, cadence and all, in our guide to workflow automation for clinics.

Reviews sit under a similar kind of rule, different in the detail. You can ask a patient for one. You can't pay for one. And under Google's own policy, you can't selectively ask only the patients who seemed happy (Google Help, Maps User Generated Content Policy). The full rundown on gathering reviews properly is in our guide to local SEO for medical and allied health practices.

What a directory like HealthEngine costs

HealthEngine's Patient Match product runs on a pay-per-new-patient model. In its own words: "Patient Match only incurs a fee when a new patient is successfully delivered to your practice" (HealthEngine, Patient Match Price Change FAQs). The actual fee isn't published anywhere I could find. I never used HealthEngine in my own clinic. So I can't tell you whether it was worth it, and I'm not going to guess.

What I can tell you is that a directory carries a bigger risk than a line item on a budget. HealthEngine was ordered by the Federal Court to pay $2.9 million for misleading conduct. It didn't publish around 17,000 reviews, and it edited around 3,000 more to soften or remove anything negative (ACCC, media release). There's a second cost too: you're trusting the platform's own conduct, and that's out of your hands.

Paid search: the one channel you can check

Google and Microsoft search ads are one channel with a real, published number, because someone publishes the auction data. Cost per click is what you pay each time someone clicks your ad, whether or not they go on to book. In the US, LOCALiQ's own book of 3,542 healthcare search campaigns puts the average cost per click at $5.64 (LOCALiQ, Healthcare Search Ads Benchmarks for 16 Specialties). Physical therapy sits at $4.95. Orthodontics is the most expensive specialty checked, at $8.76. That's US dollars, US clinics, and LOCALiQ's own managed accounts. Treat it as a rough shape. It isn't your number.

Closer to home, Medical Marketing Group pulled its own Australian data across 115 keywords in Q3 2026 (Medical Marketing Group, Healthcare Google Ads Cost Benchmarks Australia). GP clinic terms bid around $4.86 to $9.16. Dental runs $8.47 to $33.98. Same caveat applies. It's one agency's own pull, and every price moves with a live auction underneath it.

The retention number everyone repeats

You'll see this pair of stats on nearly every patient acquisition cost page online. Acquiring a new customer supposedly costs five to twenty-five times more than keeping one. A five percent bump in retention supposedly lifts profit by twenty-five to ninety-five percent. We checked both at the source.

The first comes from Harvard Business Review, and it carries its own hedge: "Depending on which study you believe, and what industry you're in, acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one" (Harvard Business Review, The Value of Keeping the Right Customers). No study is named. It's a range nobody owns.

The second traces back to Bain, and it's narrower than everyone quotes. Bain's own paper says "in financial services, for example, a 5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit" (Bain & Company, Prescription for Cutting Costs). The study covers financial services, and the number is "more than 25%." The 25 to 95% range everyone else quotes doesn't come from this paper at all. Both numbers are accurate in their own context. Neither is a healthcare statistic.

SEO's place in the mix

I checked mine mostly by making sure the basics were already right, rather than starting from nothing. It's a full topic on its own, covered properly in our guide to healthcare SEO, alongside the review and listing detail above. This post stays on channels and cost. Rankings are a separate topic.

The channels side by side

No new numbers here, just the ones above in one place.

Working out where a new patient actually came from

At my own clinic, there was no marketing team. This ran on one field on the new patient intake form: "How did you hear about us?" Someone typed the answer into the practice software by hand. Nothing was connected up to show whether a patient came from an ad or from anywhere else. That's fine for a small clinic doing one or two things.

It stops being fine once you're testing more than one channel and spending real money on any of them. My health tech startup had everything connected, so its team could see exactly where a user came from. A clinic sizing up a paid channel needs the same thing, even in a smaller form. That could be a tracked number, a discount code, or just a form field. That's why it has to flow into a report someone looks at.

Whether the lead who calls even gets answered is its own problem, covered in our guide to AI receptionists for clinics. What happens to a patient after their first visit, recalls included, is covered in conversational AI in healthcare.

What a new patient is actually worth

Lifetime value is what a patient is worth to you across their whole course of care. At my own clinic, a new patient was worth somewhere between $800 and $1,000 on that basis, depending on which practitioner they saw. That's my own estimate, off my own books. It isn't an industry number, and I wouldn't use it as one.

There's no clean rule of thumb for weighing that number against what you're spending to get one. It depends entirely on your own costs. Pretending otherwise just means you skip doing the sum on your own numbers.

Where I'd start, and what Opal does next

Not with a channel. Start with your own numbers. What's a new patient actually worth to you? Where did the ones you already have come from? Once you know that, you can check each channel above against your own numbers, instead of against whoever markets loudest.

That's the work we do in AI-powered growth. We find which part of the funnel is actually costing you patients, then fix that part first. No package, no guess at a number before we've looked at yours.

FAQ

What's the best channel for getting new patients into my clinic?

There's no single channel that works for every clinic. Referrals cost nothing in cash but take time and steady effort, because they run on relationships instead of a budget. Paid search is the one channel with a real, checkable number, because someone publishes the auction data behind it. Weigh whatever you spend against what a patient is worth to you, using your own numbers instead of an industry average.

Is a directory like HealthEngine worth paying for?

There is no clean answer, because the fee itself is not published anywhere. HealthEngine's Patient Match only charges "when a new patient is successfully delivered to your practice" (HealthEngine, Patient Match Price Change FAQs). There is a bigger cost than a line item though: HealthEngine was ordered by the Federal Court to pay $2.9 million for misleading conduct. It did not publish around 17,000 reviews, and edited around 3,000 more (ACCC, media release).

How much does a click cost on paid search ads for a clinic?

There's a real number, though it isn't Australian by default. LOCALiQ's own book of US healthcare accounts puts the average cost per click at $5.64 (LOCALiQ). Closer to home, Medical Marketing Group's Australian data has GP clinic terms bidding $4.86 to $9.16 (Medical Marketing Group). Both move with a live auction underneath them, so treat them as a rough shape rather than your own number.

Is it true that keeping a patient costs far less than acquiring a new one?

Not quite the way it's usually quoted. The "five to twenty-five times more expensive" line traces to Harvard Business Review, and even HBR hedges it: "depending on which study you believe" (Harvard Business Review). The other stat people quote, a 25 to 95% profit lift from retention, doesn't match what Bain's own paper says. Bain's real number is "more than 25%", and it's about financial services, not healthcare (Bain & Company).

How much is a new patient actually worth?

That's a number only your own books can give you. At my own clinic, a new patient was worth somewhere between $800 and $1,000 across their whole course of care, depending on the practitioner. That's my own estimate, off my own books, not an industry benchmark, and I wouldn't treat it as one.