Costs
Part of Patient Acquisition: The Version That Survives Contact With Reality
Four Lessons for Reading Patient Acquisition Case Study Claims
Four lessons for judging patient acquisition case study claims: context, evidence, FTC substantiation, and review rules, plus a worked arithmetic example.
What to take away
- Patient acquisition case studies earn the name when they state the practice setting, the change made, the measure used, and the period covered before reporting anything.
- A result without a denominator is an anecdote; keep raw counts and the definition of each measure.
- Objective advertising claims need a reasonable basis before they run, per FTC policy.
- Reviews and rankings cannot be bought, gated on sentiment, or conditioned on an incentive.
- Write the limitation next to the result, not in a footnote.
- The four lessons below draw on Geisinger, Kaiser Permanente, Ochsner Health, POM Wonderful and the FTC review rule.
What a case study has to contain
A patient acquisition case study earns its name when a stranger can follow it from setting to decision. The six parts:
- context
- question
- intervention
- evidence
- result
- limitation
Most published examples skip context and limitation, the two parts that make the rest checkable. A patient acquisition checklist keeps the six parts in one place so nothing gets dropped when the write-up is rushed.
Lesson 1: Context decides whether the result travels
CDC's evaluation framework opens with Step 1: Assess the Context, which covers readiness, interested parties, setting, and evaluation capacity. A case that omits those cannot be transferred to your practice.
Geisinger's ProvenExperience program, launched in 2015 in Danville, Pennsylvania, refunded patients when a visit fell short of expectations. Geisinger pays its physicians a salary, a condition a fee-for-service practice does not share.
Kaiser Permanente, based in Oakland, California, reported that virtual visits passed in-person visits in 2020. As an integrated payer and provider running its own medical record, its numbers do not transfer to a clinic buying software retail.
Ochsner Health in New Orleans pairs connected blood pressure cuffs with pharmacists and health coaches in its digital medicine group.
Record service conditions, staffing, systems, and any concurrent change. Note who was left out of the sample: a case built only from people who completed the journey hides everyone the journey lost.
Lesson 2: Match the conclusion to the evidence
CDC's Step 5: Generate and Support Conclusions asks for answers tied to the original questions, a shared interpretation, and recommendations the findings can carry. It also allows more than one defensible conclusion.
A before-and-after gap is not proof the intervention caused it. State what changed, what did not, what remains unknown, and which rival explanations still fit. Keep raw counts, denominators, and definitions available for review.
Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles built a model from scheduling data to flag appointments at risk of no-shows. A flag predicts a missed visit; it does not prove a reminder text caused attendance.
Cleveland Clinic's Health Essentials publishes consumer health articles daily. Page views measure reading, not booked visits, so a content case needs a booking denominator.
For an Ochsner-style digital hypertension report, ask which denominator the author used: everyone referred, everyone enrolled, or only patients who activated the cuff.
Lesson 3: Substantiate before you publish
The FTC advertising substantiation policy requires a reasonable basis for objective claims before they are disseminated. That applies to a public patient acquisition case studies performance statement as much as to an ad.
The FTC's case against POM Wonderful over pomegranate juice health claims ended with an order requiring two randomized controlled trials for disease claims. That standard sits far above a dashboard screenshot.
Separate four kinds of material: provider claims, customer statements, measured records, and independent findings. Label each. If the method is unavailable, call the item a lead for testing, not a verified result.
Zocdoc sells new-patient bookings and quotes rates by market and specialty. Healthgrades profile subscriptions typically run in the hundreds of dollars per month. Salesforce lists Health Cloud near $325 per user per month; HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional typically runs $800 to $900 per month billed annually.
Lesson 4: Reviews and rankings follow their own rules
The FTC guidance for marketers using reviews prohibits fake feedback, selective solicitation, conditioned incentives, hidden relationships, and paid rankings.
The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials took effect October 21, 2024, with civil penalties up to $51,744 per violation. Google Business Profile and Yelp both bar reviews given in exchange for discounts or gifts.
RealSelf, the cosmetic surgery review site, takes advertising from surgeons while its reviews come from patients. Apply that test when a case study names a vendor: disclose commercial relationships, product version, and study population. Reproduce one material claim with your own data before copying the approach.
A worked example of the arithmetic
Suppose a practice wants to know whether a new intake route lowered cost per booked visit. Substitute your own figures:
- Cost per booked visit = total campaign spend / booked visits
- Booked visits = completed bookings from the route
- Contact rate = contacts that reached a human / total contacts
- Wrong-service share = contacts outside the advertised service / total contacts
Run the same arithmetic on the prior period. If the denominators differ in definition, the comparison is not a comparison.
Google does not publish healthcare click prices; independent benchmarks typically put US healthcare search clicks at $3 to $10. CallRail's entry plan typically costs $45 to $50 per month, enough to attribute calls to a source.
Confirm with your state board and qualified healthcare counsel before publishing any claim tied to a regulated service.
Common questions
Are these real campaign results?
The worked example uses placeholder arithmetic. The four lessons come from published programs and enforcement actions, and your own data supplies the denominators. For worked examples that put these lessons into practice, see Seven Case Studies That Test Healthcare Marketing Strategy Claims.
Can a case study omit poor outcomes?
No. Report material harms, missing data, failures, exclusions, and limitations needed to understand the decision. A case that only shows wins is marketing, not evidence.
When can a case support scaling?
Only when the result is relevant, credible, and reproducible enough for the decision. It must also be feasible within safety, access, privacy, capacity, and cost limits. Start with a patient acquisition review of your own numbers before copying another practice's approach.
Who sets the rules for privacy and advertising?
HHS Office for Civil Rights enforces HIPAA in the U.S.; provincial privacy commissioners and the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation govern Canadian outreach. Advertising claims fall under the FTC. Confirm specifics with qualified healthcare counsel and your privacy officer.
