Tools & Checklists · Free calculator
Patient acquisition cost calculator
Work out acquisition cost by channel and service line, including contact-centre and CRM cost, not media spend alone.
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Why it exists
The problem it solves
Patient acquisition cost is usually calculated as media spend divided by bookings, which understates it every time, because it leaves out the contact centre, the CRM, and the follow-ups that actually convert an enquiry into a booked, arrived patient. A channel that looks cheap on media spend alone can be the most expensive one once those costs are counted properly.
This calculator works acquisition cost by channel and by service line, and asks you to include contact-centre and CRM cost as a shared cost allocated across the channels they support, rather than leaving them out because they sit in a different budget line. The example values show the arithmetic only; every one should be replaced with your own.
Inside
What you get
- A channel-level input sheet for media spend, enquiries, and bookings by service line
- A shared-cost sheet to allocate contact-centre and CRM cost across channels
- An automatic calculation of cost per enquiry and cost per booked appointment, by channel and service line
- A comparison view ranking channels by true acquisition cost, not media spend alone
- An instructions sheet on how to allocate shared costs without double-counting
- A notes column flagging where your own conversion data is too thin to trust yet
Audience
Who it’s for
For marketing, growth and finance leaders in Indian hospitals who want a patient acquisition cost figure that survives a conversation with the board.
Method
How to use it
- Enter media spend, enquiries and bookings by channel and service line, replacing every example value.
- Enter your contact-centre and CRM costs on the shared-cost sheet and allocate them across the channels they actually support.
- Read the calculated cost per enquiry and cost per booked appointment on the summary sheet, by channel.
- Compare channels on true acquisition cost, not on media spend or lead volume alone.
- Flag any channel where your conversion data is too thin to trust, and treat that number as provisional until you have more.
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Questions about this calculator
Enter your email in the form on this page and confirm it from the email I send you. Your welcome email then includes the download link for this calculator and for every other tool on the Tools & Checklists page. It is free.
Because a lead that arrives cheaply from media but is never called back, or is called back three days later, was not actually acquired cheaply, the cost simply moved to a budget line nobody was looking at. Counting it properly is what makes channels comparable.
The workbook allocates them by share of enquiries handled per channel, which is a reasonable default. If some channels produce enquiries that take longer to handle, for example unscheduled calls versus a completed web form, you can adjust the allocation on the shared-cost sheet to reflect that.
No. There is no benchmark figure anywhere in it. The right acquisition cost depends on the value of a patient to that specific service line over time, which only you can estimate, and a printed number would mislead more readers than it helped.
Track both if you can, a scheduled booking and an arrived, seen patient, since the gap between them is often where the real cost hides. If you can only track one reliably, use arrived patients, since a scheduled appointment that never shows produced no revenue and should not be counted as a successful acquisition.
Yes, and that is often the more useful way to run it first. Acquisition cost varies sharply by service line, so a single blended number across the hospital usually hides more than it reveals. Run it by service line, then roll up to a hospital view once you trust the inputs.