Most telehealth funnels lose the majority of their spend between the form submission and the attended consultation. We instrument that gap, then close it stage by stage.
Request a Telehealth Growth AuditTelehealth patient acquisition is the end-to-end process of taking someone from first contact to an active care relationship. It is not a lead-generation campaign with a healthcare theme. Every stage has its own drop-off rate, its own owner, and its own fix, and the stages are not interchangeable.
The vocabulary matters as much as the mechanics. A person who submits a form is a lead. A person a provider has seen and accepted into care is a patient. Conflating the two produces reporting that looks strong and revenue that does not arrive.
Contact details captured. No eligibility established, no clinical relationship of any kind.
Screening complete. State of residence is inside the licensed footprint and the person matches programme criteria.
A specific appointment slot is held with a provider.
The patient actually joined. This is the first stage worth paying a channel for.
A licensed clinician independently determines the care plan. Marketing has no input here.
The patient completes the first clinical step of the plan.
The care relationship is live and being delivered.
The relationship persists past the first cycle — where programme economics are actually decided.
We never describe a lead as a patient before the relevant event has occurred, in reporting, in ad copy, or in a proposal.
The work is a fit when demand exists but conversion through the clinical funnel is the constraint.
You are buying enough clicks. A large share of people who start intake never finish it, and nobody can tell you which question loses them.
Consultations are scheduled and then not attended. The reminder and recovery layer is either missing or generic.
Provider coverage changed and the acquisition system did not, so you are paying for traffic from states you cannot serve.
Cost per lead looks acceptable and cost per active patient does not. The gap between the two has never been broken down by stage.
Intake forms often mirror an internal record structure: long, ordered by what the back office wants first, and asking clinical questions before the patient has any reason to trust the brand. Every additional pre-trust question is a paid visitor discarded.
The period between scheduling and the consultation is usually the least-owned part of the funnel. A single confirmation email is not a show-rate strategy, and no-shows are frequently written off rather than recovered.
State licensure is an eligibility rule, not a bid modifier. When the licensed footprint lives in an operations document rather than in the acquisition system, spend leaks into states no provider can serve.
We work the stages in order of measured loss, not in order of what is easiest to change.
Before changing anything, each stage transition becomes a tracked event with a stable definition. Most engagements start here because the client cannot yet see which stage is losing the money.
State, programme fit, and readiness move to the front. Clinical detail moves behind the point of commitment. Unqualified visitors are routed out quickly and politely instead of being dragged through a full form.
Speed-to-lead response, real-time slot availability, and same-session booking remove the delay in which a patient compares alternatives and cools off.
Reminder sequencing across channels, easy rescheduling rather than cancellation, and structured recovery for missed appointments — measured as its own funnel with its own targets.
Once attended consultations and, where reportable, first fills are flowing back into the channel layer, budget is reallocated to the sources that produce patients rather than the sources that produce forms.
We do not run copy that promises a prescription, an approval, or a specific clinical result, and we do not build funnels that imply the provider consultation is a formality. Beyond the regulatory exposure, it produces exactly the patients who fail to convert downstream and inflate refund and churn rates.
Marketing tools should not receive personal health information. Stage events are designed to carry the fact that a transition occurred and the channel it came from — not clinical content. Where a downstream event can only be reported inside a clinical system, we work from aggregate counts the client can lawfully share.
Each stage transition is reported as a rate, a volume, and a cost.
The deliverable that demonstrates the method is your own stage audit: current volumes and rates at each transition, the cost sitting behind each drop, and the order we would work them. It is built from your data, not from a template.
Any performance figure we cite in a proposal carries its client or vertical, date range, baseline, operating budget, and the exact definition of the result — with the caveat that performance varies by market, programme, and provider capacity.
At minimum: the person lives in a state where your provider group is licensed, they match the programme criteria the clinical team has defined, and they have completed screening. Anything short of that is a lead. Agreeing this definition before campaigns launch is what makes channel reporting comparable later.
Digital Wellness Partners is a marketing and growth operator, not a healthcare provider, pharmacy, or law firm. Clinical decisions are made independently by licensed providers. Clients should obtain qualified legal, privacy, medical, and regulatory advice.
Written by Simeon Krastev · Last reviewed August 7, 2026
We map your funnel from lead to refill, show where the spend is being lost, and give you the order we would fix it in.
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