TL;DR
Ask the agency to demonstrate an exit before you need one. Check whether your practice can retain a usable inquiry export, understand its fields, preserve contact preferences and keep public inquiry paths working. Treat account access, contract rights and permission for future contact as separate questions. Paying for ads does not answer all of them.
Replace “Who owns the leads?” with a concrete handover
A CRM login lets you see something today. Your exit plan needs to establish what you can receive, in what format, under which agreement, and what your practice may do afterward. Do not describe people as property. Focus the commercial conversation on records, content, accounts and responsibilities.
Ask the agency to walk through the handover while the relationship is healthy. Explain that you want continuity if your practice hires internally, changes software or changes providers. A useful answer names the systems, transfer process, limitations and people who will perform it.
GetPatients has a commercial interest in healthcare visibility services. This checklist should apply equally to any service it proposes. It does not establish a particular agency's terms, a CRM's capabilities or your practice's legal rights.
Separate the questions your agreement must answer
Use the table to mark confirmed terms and unresolved items. Request actual clauses or platform documentation beside each answer rather than accepting an informal assurance that everything is “yours.”
| Question | Evidence to request | Exit risk to resolve |
|---|---|---|
| Can the practice use the inquiry records after termination? | Relevant contract language and the practice's assessment of permitted uses | Access and permitted reuse are being treated as the same thing |
| What can be exported? | Field list, format, exclusions and test export | A contact list omits history, source context or preferences |
| Can the agency use or disclose the records for other purposes? | Applicable contract restrictions and recipient list | The agreement leaves sharing, resale or reuse unclear |
| What happens to landing pages and creative? | Hosting, domain and content transfer terms | A page disappears while ads or old links still point to it |
| Which systems remain under practice control? | Named account administrators and recovery process | The practice depends on an outgoing employee or agency login |
| Who handles open inquiries during cutover? | Named staff owner and an agreed transition plan | Messages arrive, but nobody is responsible for responding |
Do not assume a broad ownership clause resolves every row. Ask qualified counsel to resolve disputed terms or ambiguous data-use language. In parallel, operations can still test the documented technical handover with synthetic records.
Rehearse with a clearly labeled test inquiry
Use a practice-controlled test contact and an approved test environment where available. Label the record as synthetic and prevent it from entering real outreach. Do not invent a medical history or use a real person's record to make the test realistic.
Trace the record from the public form to the receiving system and through the proposed export. Capture the field names, values and destination in an access-controlled handover note. The objective is to understand what survives the transfer, not to trigger actual communication.
Ask the receiving operator to explain the imported record without help from the old interface. Can they identify which form produced it, whether it was handled, which staff queue should receive it and which contact restrictions apply? A CSV that opens successfully can still leave these questions unanswered.
Create a field dictionary: source field ___; meaning ___; destination field ___; transformation ___; responsible owner ___. Include time zones and status definitions where those fields exist. Identify fields that are unavailable rather than silently replacing them with guessed values.
For contact preferences, use an approved suppression test to verify that a restricted test record stays restricted after import. If the destination cannot interpret a preference or the supporting permission evidence is missing, quarantine that record from outreach while the responsible person resolves it. This is a recommended control, not a statement about any named software's behavior.
Check permission before restarting follow-up
Exportability does not establish permission to send a new campaign. Ask the practice's privacy and legal owners to assess the actual information, intended communication, collection notices, agreements and applicable rules. Preserve opt-outs and supporting permission records through the transfer; do not reset preferences because the vendor changed.
For U.S. covered entities, HHS explains that using or disclosing protected health information for marketing generally requires an individual's written authorization, with limited exceptions and distinctions for specified healthcare communications. Whether that framework applies to your medspa, a particular inquiry or a proposed message requires a fact-specific assessment. HHS marketing guidance.
That U.S. guidance does not settle the rules for an engagement elsewhere. Have the responsible reviewer assess the actual jurisdiction, recipients and intended follow-up before approving a transfer or campaign.
Keep clinical notes and unnecessary sensitive details out of the marketing migration plan. Use the data-request review method to question fields that the incoming provider does not need for its agreed task.
Keep public pages and ad accounts in the rehearsal
Open each active campaign destination and relevant public inquiry link. Record who hosts the page, who controls its domain, where forms send submissions and which telephone destination is used. Agree whether the page transfers, stays temporarily available or is replaced through an approved cutover. Test the destination after the change.
Check account dependencies before removing agency access. Google's documentation says an individual Ads account keeps its own campaign history after unlinking a manager, while shared lists, cross-account tracking and some billing arrangements can be affected. That distinction does not establish what happens inside an agency's CRM. Google Ads unlinking guidance.
Use the website access handoff for system roles and removal steps. Keep the exit rehearsal focused on the inquiry journey: public page, receiving system, usable export, restricted import and accountable staff response.
End with a go, repair or hold decision
Record the proposed cutover, owners, acceptance evidence, unresolved items and rollback process. Do not delete the old system merely because an export exists. Have the responsible people confirm retention and deletion obligations, then follow the approved plan.
If an export is incomplete, ask for a corrected test or a documented alternative. If permission is unresolved, hold affected outreach while continuing page and account continuity work. If the rehearsal succeeds, retain the field dictionary and test evidence so the actual exit follows an understood process.
Frequently asked questions
Does paying the agency mean I can automatically take its landing pages?
Check the agreement and platform arrangement. Request the source files or transfer method, domain control, hosting terms and any exclusions. Plan a replacement route if the page cannot transfer under the agreed terms.
Is a spreadsheet of names and contact details enough?
Judge it against the next operator's task. It may omit source, status and contact restrictions. Require an interpretable field list and a successful restricted import test before treating the handover as complete.
Should I disconnect the agency as soon as notice is sent?
Use an agreed access and cutover plan. Confirm practice-controlled access, destinations and dependent services before routine removal. If there is a current security incident, use the practice's incident process instead of this planned-exit workflow.