TL;DR
Compare offices by the services and consultation access they actually offer, then separate referral, self-inquiry and unknown source. Use compatible definitions, reporting periods and observation cutoffs. A group-wide acquisition average cannot diagnose an underfilled office. Build a location-by-source capacity comparison before reallocating budget or judging local staff.
Define the local decision before ranking offices
An office with strong professional referrals and an office dependent on direct inquiries do not necessarily face the same acquisition problem. Nor does group-wide procedure activity explain whether a particular site has usable consultations. Start with the office and service the owner wants to support.
Record its actual clinician schedule, appointment types, receiving team and public request route. Identify any shared resource that limits consultation access. Do not compare every office against an assumed identical service menu or infer clinical capacity from the hours a building is open.
The purpose is to choose a local repair or investment. A ranking of offices can obscure the decision if different service mixes, source records and available appointments sit behind the totals. Make those differences visible before calculating a rate.
Build the location-by-source comparison
Create a separate record for each actual office, supported service and source category. Have practice staff reconcile records inside approved systems and provide only findings approved for the marketing recipient.
| Comparison field | Evidence to retain | Interpretation limit |
|---|---|---|
| Office and service | Verified actual coverage and clinician route | Group-level service availability does not establish local access |
| Consultation capacity | Usable appointment supply and actual constraints during the period | General open hours are not consultation slots |
| Referral requests | Reconciled receipt cohort and relationship history | Repeat transmissions are not separate people |
| Direct self-inquiries | Clinic-confirmed requests and actual source evidence | Website activity alone does not establish received demand |
| Mixed or unknown source | Actual recorded uncertainty | Missing source should not be assigned to the favored channel |
| Confirmed consultations | Compatible cohort and current appointment state | Confirmation is not attendance |
| Attended consultations | Verified attendance at the observation cutoff | Attendance does not establish a procedure or its value |
| Resource commitment | Actual local vendor, media and staff cost categories | Shared costs need an explicit allocation method |
| Administrative constraint | Recorded issue and responsible owner | An unresolved requirement is not automatically local intake failure |
Complete office ___; service ___; source ___; cohort ___; cutoff ___; capacity evidence ___; included costs ___; unknowns ___; next local decision ___. This is an original comparison framework. It does not establish that source or geography caused a performance difference.
Keep referral and consumer discovery compatible
Someone may receive a professional recommendation and later search the surgeon or office name. Record available influences rather than forcing the case into a channel winner. A technical traffic source and a reported recommendation answer different questions.
Google Analytics campaign parameters can identify source, medium and campaign for configured traffic reporting. Google's campaign URL guidance. They do not establish the person's complete referral history or the eventual consultation outcome. Have qualified technical and privacy staff approve actual tracking changes before implementation.
The discovery attribution guide supports neutral source reporting. Keep unknowns visible across offices. An office with more complete records can appear different simply because another office lacks source coverage. Report that measurement difference rather than interpreting it as demand.
Compare like decisions, then explain the differences
If evaluating self-inquiry handling, compare compatible request and consultation states for the same supported service and observation method. If evaluating referral administration, use reconciled receipt cohorts and the relevant requirements. Do not compare all completed procedures at a referral-heavy site with form submissions at another site.
Keep cost definitions consistent. If the group allocates a shared agency invoice across offices, state how and why. Separately show media assigned directly to an office and local labor included in the review. Do not call a location cheaper simply because a shared cost was omitted there.
If calculating a rate, establish a compatible population and meaningful denominator first. Show unavailable where that cannot be done. Do not manufacture precise comparisons from sparse or incomplete records. A group total may still serve a group planning question, but it should sit alongside the local records rather than replace them.
Allocate the next work from the local constraint
If relevant requests arrive but the promoted clinician is not available at that office, repair the offer and capacity plan. If receiving coverage fails, fix the handoff. If supported consultation access exists and relevant demand remains untested, consider a bounded local acquisition project with a defined outcome and budget owner.
Use the service coverage matrix to maintain local facts. It governs site structure; this comparison governs spending decisions across unlike source mixes. Ask the agency for a brief explaining the evidence, proposed local work and limitation that remains after it.
GetPatients has a commercial interest in healthcare visibility services. Hold its proposals to the same local comparison standard. A group average should not conceal the office-level reason for a purchase or imply every site can achieve the same result.
Frequently asked questions
Can we use group averages for budgeting?
They can inform group-level questions when definitions are clear. Add local source, service and capacity evidence before using them to diagnose an office or reallocate its acquisition work.
Should the underfilled office receive more advertising?
First establish supported consultations, a usable inquiry path and what the existing records show. More demand will not resolve an offer that routes to the wrong office or an unowned receiving queue.
What if an office has very little evidence?
State the actual coverage and uncertainty. Improve the consequential record or run a bounded test. Do not invent a benchmark or infer poor performance from missing information.