About one in three U.S. adults use AI chatbots for health, some to help decide whether to see a doctor. Google and OpenAI say their AI search answers draw on web pages, and your website is the source you control most fully. Make it the public reference for what you treat, who you take, where and when, and the next step.

Put the question a new patient would ask to an AI tool, such as ChatGPT or the AI answers in Google search. Who near me treats this, takes my plan and can see me soon? The answer arrives as a short paragraph with a few names and a link or two. Your practice may be in it, with last year’s hours and a plan you dropped in June. Or the answer names a competitor, and its link opens a page that lists plans and hours where yours says to call.

Before the next marketing dollar, the team needs two answers. What does AI say about us, and where does it look?

How many people ask AI about their health?

In a Pew Research Center survey in June 2026, 34 percent of U.S. adults said they use AI chatbots for health reasons. Among all U.S. adults, 15 percent said they use them to help decide whether to go to a doctor. That decision comes before anyone calls your office.

KFF polled U.S. adults in late February and early March 2026. About a third had turned to AI chatbots for health information in the past year. Both surveys asked about health in general, so the step to choosing a practice is our reading.

In our reading, search data shows a related pull toward the answer itself. In March 2025, Google users clicked a result about half as often when an AI summary appeared at the top. Searches that began with a question word, such as who or why, drew an AI summary 60 percent of the time.

Figure 1

Google users clicked a result about half as often when an AI summary appeared

Share of visits to a Google results page with a click on a traditional result link, March 2025

People were also more likely to end their browsing after a page with an AI summary. We read this as a sign that the answer can be where the search ends. What it says about your practice can then matter more than the links beneath it.

Where does the answer come from?

From pages and listings across the web, your own site among them. How much comes from your site rests partly on whether AI tools can read it. Google’s AI answers come in two forms, AI Overviews atop some search results and AI Mode for more complex questions. Both may run several related searches, then link to pages that support the answer.

Google says the best practices for search remain relevant to those answers, starting with pages it can read and the important facts in text. It adds that new AI text files or markup are unnecessary to appear in them. We would test any pitch for special tactics in Google’s AI answers against that list.

ChatGPT’s search draws on the web too. OpenAI says its search crawler, a program that visits pages, surfaces websites in ChatGPT’s search results. It adds that a site blocking that crawler drops out of those answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link. OpenAI also runs a training crawler, which gathers pages that may be used to train its models. A site can allow or opt out of each crawler separately.

We would treat crawler access as a business decision, made with your legal and privacy teams. OpenAI adds that visits ChatGPT makes when a user asks a question may fall outside a site’s crawler settings. A public page stays readable to any visitor, so we would treat these settings as choices about visibility.

Google says the rules for its search crawler manage crawling for Search, and its AI answers are part of Search. It adds that crawler access is set in several places, from the site to its hosting. Have your web team check each one against the decision.

We would expect the answer to lean on other listings when your site leaves a fact out, and those listings can carry errors. A study checked Marketplace plan directories by phone in seven states and six specialties, from May 2022 to December 2023. In 14.5 percent of listings checked, the directory wrongly said a provider was taking new patients. Each of those can send your front desk a call it has to turn away. The risk, as we read it, is that an answer drawn from listings like these can repeat their errors.

What does the answer need from your site?

The opening question asks for four facts. They are what you treat, who you take, where and when, and the next step. What you treat belongs in the words patients use. How your site describes a condition or treatment is for your clinicians and compliance team to decide. This piece stays with the four access facts.

Who you take means plans by name, as your contracts list them, with the date they were last checked. Add a line that asks patients to confirm coverage with their plan. Where and when means each location, its services, hours and any telehealth. The next step means new-patient status, any referral your practice or the patient’s plan asks for, and the way to book.

Some sites keep these facts apart from the page. The plan list sits in a scanned PDF, the hours in an image, and a line says to call. Google recommends keeping important content in text.

Our piece on referral sources argued that these facts need an owner in operations. In our view, AI is now a second reader of the same page, so give each fact an owner who already holds it. Clinical leaders own what you treat, contracting owns the plan list, each location’s manager owns hours and services, and scheduling owns new-patient status. When contracting sends a health plan an update, the site gets it too. Marketing publishes each change to the site and the listings you manage.

Google’s own list names the Business Profile, the listing it shows in Search and Maps. Keep the same facts there and in every directory listing you can edit.

We would fix these four facts before funding the next campaign, because every campaign sends patients to them.

How do you check what AI tells patients?

Give one person a fixed list of questions and a log. Each month, that person puts them to ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode for each location, by town, covering services, plans, hours and booking. Keep the questions general, and use the AI tools your organization allows. Pew notes that an AI summary may change over time, so we would treat each check as a sample.

Compare each answer with your site, correct what you control, and send the rest to the listing’s owner. Changes to how you describe care go through your clinicians. After any change to plans, hours or locations, update every listing you control, then ask again.

Then measure what arrives, with the analytics tools your privacy team has approved. ChatGPT marks the visits it sends from its search results with a tag, so your analytics team can count the tagged visits. Google counts clicks from its AI answers in the overall search traffic it reports in Search Console, within the Web search type. We read that to mean those clicks sit inside your search totals, unlabeled.

Both measures cover only the patients who click through. We would watch another number more closely, the new-patient calls turned away over plan, location or availability.

What should the team decide this quarter?

Three decisions, in order.

1. Make the site the public reference for the four facts. Give each fact its owner, from clinical leaders to scheduling, and show the date it was last checked.
2. Decide which AI crawlers your site settings allow, with your legal and privacy teams. Then have your web team confirm that every site, hosting and security setting matches the decision.
3. Check what AI tells patients, every month. Score each answer by location, correct what you control and track the new-patient calls you turn away.

On Monday, ask the team three questions. Ask an AI tool which plans you take. Is the answer right? Where did it come from? When did someone last check that page?

If that page lacks an owner, it may still carry last year’s answer, and an AI answer can repeat it.

At jscTEK, we understand how healthcare buyers decide. See what we build on our Work page.

Sources

1. How many adults use AI chatbots for health, and why. Emma Kikuchi, Giancarlo Pasquini and Eileen Yam, Pew Research Center, “From Diagnoses to Treatments, Why Americans Use AI Chatbots for Health,” August 25, 2026, a survey of 3,488 U.S. adults, June 22 to 28, 2026. In it, 34 percent say they ever use AI chatbots for at least one of eight health and medical reasons, and 15 percent of all U.S. adults use them to help decide whether to go to a doctor. Accessed October 25, 2026.
2. A second survey. KFF, “Poll: 1 in 3 Adults Are Turning to AI Chatbots for Health Information, Equaling the Share Who Use Social Media for Health,” March 25, 2026, KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust, 1,343 U.S. adults, February 24 to March 2, 2026, in which 32 percent of adults turned to AI chatbots for health information in the past year. Accessed October 25, 2026.
3. Clicks and summaries in Google search. Athena Chapekis and Anna Lieb, Pew Research Center, “Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results,” July 22, 2025, browsing data from 900 U.S. adults, March 1 to 31, 2025, covering 68,879 Google searches. A click on a traditional result link came in 8 percent of visits with an AI summary and 15 percent of visits with traditional results only, and a click on a link inside the summary in 1 percent. Browsing ended on 26 percent of pages with an AI summary and 16 percent of pages with traditional results only. About one in five searches produced an AI summary, and 60 percent of searches that began with who, what, when or why did. Pew notes that the AI summary for any given search may change over time. Accessed October 25, 2026.
4. How Google’s AI answers find and credit pages. Google Search Central, “AI features and your website,” last updated December 10, 2025. AI Overviews and AI Mode may run several related searches and link to supporting pages; the best practices for search remain relevant, and new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup are unneeded; the basics include allowing crawling in robots.txt and by any CDN or hosting, keeping important content in text and keeping Business Profile information up to date; robots.txt rules for Googlebot control crawling for Search; clicks from AI features count in the overall search traffic in Search Console, within the Web search type. Accessed October 25, 2026.
5. OpenAI’s crawlers. OpenAI, “Overview of OpenAI Crawlers.” OAI-SearchBot surfaces websites in ChatGPT search results, and sites that opt out drop out of those answers, though they can still appear as navigational links; GPTBot crawls content that may be used in training; each setting is independent of the others. For ChatGPT-User, which acts when a user asks, “robots.txt rules may not apply.” Accessed October 25, 2026.
6. Counting visits from ChatGPT. OpenAI Help Center, “Publishers and Developers – FAQ.” ChatGPT adds the parameter utm_source=chatgpt.com to referral URLs from its search results. Accessed October 25, 2026.
7. New-patient flags in plan directories. Simon F. Haeder and Wendy Y. Xu, “Inaccuracies related to accepting new patient flags in Affordable Care Act plans’ provider directories,” Health Affairs Scholar 3(5), qxaf082, April 15, 2025, a secret shopper survey of Marketplace plans in six specialties and seven states, May 2022 to December 2023, which found that 14.5 percent of 20,514 verified listings wrongly said a provider was accepting new patients. Accessed October 25, 2026.

Growth budgets often follow volume, revenue or the loudest service line leader. Yet the line that brings in the most per new patient can keep the smallest share of it. Fund the line where what a new patient contributes covers the cost of winning one, and the schedule has room.

Picture the meeting that sets next year’s growth budget, where three service line leaders each want the next marketing dollar. The orthopedic clinic brings search volume, sleep medicine brings a waiting list, and physical therapy brings the most revenue per new patient. Each makes its case on volume or revenue.

The CFO needs two answers first. What does each line keep from a new patient, and can its schedule take more?

Why look past revenue?

Because payers pay very different amounts, and some services cost far more to deliver. In 2024, one large insurer’s PPO plans paid 147 percent of Medicare’s rates for clinician services, MedPAC found. Medicaid fee-for-service physician fees averaged 75 percent of Medicare’s. The commercial premium over Medicare also varies by service, and the case assumes a smaller one for therapy, 110 percent of Medicare.

So a service line’s payer mix shapes what each new patient brings in. This piece compares service lines, each with the patients it already serves.

Revenue also hides the cost to serve. Two lines can bill alike and keep very different amounts, because their visits differ in clinician time and in what that time costs. That is why the measure here is contribution, what a new patient brings in minus the cost to serve. The cost covers clinician and staff time at what it costs, plus supplies and billing. Contribution is the margin a new patient leaves to cover fixed costs and fund growth.

The case counts clinician time in every line, since sustained growth needs paid time. While a line has open slots, its next few patients cost less.

Whom you serve rests on your mission and access commitments, and those commitments can fund a line whatever its contribution. Your compliance and legal teams decide how any campaign reaches patients.

What does a new patient contribute?

In this case, the line with the most revenue per new patient keeps the smallest share of it. Therapy keeps under a third of each dollar, while the other two lines keep closer to half. Revenue per new patient is first-year visits and tests, times what each payer pays for each, weighted by the line’s payer mix.

Volume explains therapy’s revenue, and a thin margin on each visit explains its share. In the case, a therapy patient has about ten visits in the first year. In practice, each patient’s clinicians set the plan of care. Ten visits lift revenue, and they lift the cost to serve too. Each therapy visit also pays less than a visit in the other two lines.

The case takes therapy’s staff cost per visit from a public physical therapy chain’s reported figures. Its payment per visit sits below that chain’s, and that gap decides therapy’s rank in dollars. In the case, sleep medicine’s payer mix pays the most. The orthopedic clinic counts office visits only, and surgery and imaging would add to its revenue and its cost.

Chart 1

In this case, physical therapy brings in the most per new patient and keeps the smallest share

First-year revenue per new patient by payer mix, the contribution left after the cost to serve, and the share of revenue kept

In this case, a budget that follows revenue would fund physical therapy first.

What can you afford to spend to win one?

At most, what a new patient contributes in the period you want the spend to pay back. In this case, that period is the first year. Call each line’s first-year contribution per new patient its ceiling, the most it can spend to win one. The first year is a payback test, so it sets aside later years and care in other lines, such as surgery. Lines whose patients return for years may earn a longer period.

Spend the whole ceiling, and the patient’s first-year contribution goes entirely to winning them. A target below the ceiling keeps some for fixed costs. For a growth team, the ceiling is also a defense. Spend below it pays back within the year, in terms finance already uses.

Then compare the ceiling with what each line spends today per first visit. That is its campaign spend divided by the new patients those campaigns added. The average flatters the next dollar, which, in our view, often wins fewer patients than the last. Spend per first visit also differs by line, because patients reach each one by different roads, from search to a physician’s referral.

In this case, physical therapy spends more to win a patient than one contributes in year one. The orthopedic clinic spends well under its ceiling, and on paper, sleep medicine has the most room under its ceiling. For physical therapy, we would start with the referral path, since easier sending may lower spend per first visit. Your compliance and legal teams decide how any outreach reaches referring physicians.

Is there room on the schedule?

Ask before you spend, because marketing into a full schedule buys a longer wait. A 2025 survey of six specialties in 15 major metro areas put the average wait for a new-patient appointment at 31 days. In a July 2026 MGMA poll, the largest share of medical groups reported steady new-patient waits, and more reported longer waits than shorter.

Hiring has a mixed record. Practices that hired landed in all three outcomes, and MGMA wrote that what varied was demand. Added capacity shortens waits only when it outpaces demand, and marketing adds demand.

So track an access measure for each line against a target its leaders set. MGMA lists the third next available appointment among the measures to track alongside new-patient waits. A National Academies report explains that the third open slot looks past last-minute cancellations.

In this case, each line’s target is 14 days, and sleep medicine’s wait runs well past it. Its waiting list is patients already asking for care. Its growth money goes to access first, through options its leaders weigh, such as the schedule template, staff or another clinician. When the schedule is the constraint, rank by contribution per clinician visit. Sleep medicine leads on that measure here, which carries its case for another clinician.

Capacity can mean clinicians, rooms, equipment or hours, and most take longer to add than a campaign takes to launch.

Chart 2

In this case, the next marketing dollar goes to the orthopedic clinic

The most each line can spend to win a new patient and still pay back in year one, what it spends today per first visit, and how long a new patient waits

In that budget meeting, we would fund the orthopedic clinic’s campaign and take sleep medicine’s case for capacity to the staffing plan. Therapy’s short wait suggests open slots, where its next few patients cost far less. We would fill those first, then ask therapy for a lower spend per first visit.

The orthopedic and sleep calls hold by wide margins, while therapy’s call is close. A cost to serve about 4 percent lower, or a payment per visit about 3 percent higher, would reverse it. At the chain’s own payment per visit, therapy would rank second in dollars and earn back its spend. In a ten-visit line, each dollar per visit counts ten times.

What should the team decide this quarter?

Three decisions, in order.

1. Rank service lines by contribution per new patient, each at the payer mix it serves today. Use patients who started a year ago, what each payer actually paid and the cost to serve, clinician time included.
2. Set the most each line can spend to win a new patient. Compare it with campaign spend per first visit today, and remember the next patient often costs more to win.
3. Fund marketing where the schedule has room. Where new patients wait past target, fund access first.

The inputs often sit in four places. Practice management holds visits and payers, cost accounting holds costs, marketing tools hold spend, and intake records how each patient found you. Your privacy team decides how patient records and marketing data meet.

On Monday, ask the team three questions. Which report shows contribution per new patient by line, with clinician time counted? Can intake tie each new patient to the campaign that brought them? How long does a new patient wait in each line, against its target?

Until those answers sit side by side, the next budget will likely follow volume or revenue.

At jscTEK, we understand how healthcare buyers decide. See what we build on our Work page.

Sources

1. Commercial payment relative to Medicare. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy, March 2026, chapter 4, “Physician and other health professional services.” In 2024, PPO plans of one large national insurer paid, on average, 147 percent of fee-for-service Medicare’s rates for clinician services, up from 140 percent in 2023; the ratio varied by type of service. Accessed October 25, 2026.
2. Medicaid fees relative to Medicare. KFF State Health Facts, “Medicaid-to-Medicare Fee Index,” from Laura Skopec, Avani Pugazhendhi and Stephen Zuckerman, Urban Institute, May 2025, which put the index for all services at 0.75 in 2024. The index compares fee-for-service Medicaid fees with Medicare fees, so Medicaid managed care payments fall outside it. The two averages differ in payer scope, measure and service weights, so the piece reports each against Medicare. Accessed October 25, 2026.
3. The average wait for a new-patient appointment. AMN Healthcare, “The Growing Challenges With Physician Appointment Wait Times,” June 30, 2025, on its 2025 Survey on Physician Appointment Wait Times, which found an average of 31 days across 15 major metro areas in six medical specialties. Accessed October 25, 2026.
4. How groups moved access in 2026. Chris Harrop, MGMA Stat, “New-patient wait times largely hold flat in 2026 as some groups add providers in bid to meet demand,” July 15, 2026, a July 14, 2026 poll with 197 applicable responses. In it, 46 percent of medical groups reported new-patient waits unchanged year to date, 28 percent longer and 22 percent shorter. Practices that hired landed in all three outcome groups, and MGMA wrote that what varied was demand. It lists the third next available appointment among the measures to track alongside new-patient waits. Accessed October 25, 2026.
5. Therapy’s cost and payment per visit. U.S. Physical Therapy, Inc., “U.S. Physical Therapy Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Results,” Business Wire, February 26, 2025. For the 2024 fourth quarter it reported salaries and related costs of $63.00 per visit and a net rate of $104.73 per visit, and $104.71 for the full year. The case sets therapy’s cost to serve at $70 a visit, the $63.00 plus an assumed $7 for supplies and billing, and its payment works out to about $97 a visit. At the chain’s $104.71, therapy would contribute about $347, rank second in dollars and cover its $300 spend. In dollars, therapy ranks last only while its cost to serve stays above $67.63 a visit or its payment below $99.74; it covers its spend below a $67.38 cost or above a $100.00 payment, and ranks first below a $60.89 cost. At each of these points, therapy keeps the smallest share of its revenue. Accessed October 26, 2026.
6. Therapy’s payer mix. U.S. Physical Therapy, Inc., Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2024, which reports that about 40.6 percent of visits and 36.0 percent of net patient revenue came from patients with Medicare or Medicaid coverage; managed care and commercial insurance made up 47.2 percent of revenue, workers’ compensation 10.1 percent and other payers 6.7 percent. By our arithmetic, visits covered by Medicare or Medicaid averaged about $93 and other visits about $113. The case gives therapy 50 percent Medicare and Medicaid visits and sets commercial therapy at 1.10 times Medicare, an assumption below the chain’s other payers as a group, which include workers’ compensation. Accessed October 26, 2026.
7. Why the third open slot. Institute of Medicine, Transforming Health Care Scheduling and Access: Getting to Now, The National Academies Press, 2015, chapter 2, Box 2-1. The first and second available appointments often follow last-minute cancellations, so the third next available appointment best represents the access system as a whole. Accessed October 26, 2026.
8. The chain’s 2024 quarters. U.S. Physical Therapy, Inc., first-quarter 2024 results, with salaries and related costs of $61.42 per visit; the second quarter, $59.66; and the third quarter, $62.47. With the fourth quarter’s $63.00, the year ran from $59.66 to $63.00, and the case uses the fourth quarter. Accessed October 26, 2026.

On the design side, we see four things an FDA-regulated product, such as a prescription drug, often asks of its website. They are one argument for every reader, safety information beside every claim, a gate matched to each path and a record of every version. Each can be built into the templates and approved by your review committee before the first page.

Picture the review meeting three weeks before launch. The brand team has the product site on the big screen, and the medical, legal and regulatory reviewers each bring a marked-up copy. The medical reviewer opens the home page on a phone, scrolls past the efficacy headline and finds the safety information four screens down. The legal reviewer asks who can reach the dosing page. The regulatory reviewer asks how anyone will match the live page to its approved version.

Each question is about how the site is built, and each one sends a page back. The answers belong in the templates, the layouts every page is built on. From approval on, the product website speaks for an approved drug. FDA’s nonbinding draft guidance says a company is responsible for promotion on sites it owns, controls, creates, influences or operates, directly or through others.

The FDA documents cited here cover prescription drugs, and your regulatory and legal teams decide how they apply to your site. This piece looks at the design side, through websites jscTEK launched for FDA-approved products.

Who does the site have to persuade?

Often more than one room. On a website jscTEK launched for an FDA-approved product, two rooms had to hear the same thing. Nuclear medicine acquires and interprets the scan, while neurology decides a patient needs one. Those audiences read different journals, attend different meetings and search different terms, so a message pitched at the midpoint arrives diluted in both.

jscTEK’s answer was one claims architecture, a term for the ranked claims a brand makes and the evidence behind each. Unlike a midpoint message, it held for the reader of the scan and the neurologist who orders it. The argument at the booth was the argument on the product page. The site had a consumer side too. The consumer and professional sides each had their own track within one click.

Another launch jscTEK worked on faced the same split. Its positioning was aimed at the physicians who order the agent and the physicians who read it, rarely the same people. The campaign carried that argument across the site, the field and the meeting, holding its shape in each.

For an approved product, one argument also matters to review. Every claim on the site usually goes through the committee, and each new argument adds claims to clear and keep in step.

Where does the safety information belong on every page?

Beside every claim, at every screen size. A physician may read one page between patients, so we design each page with a claim to carry its own safety information.

The FDA’s binding rule for prescription drug ads calls for balance, a test your regulatory team may apply to the site. Under it, an ad may lack fair balance if side effect and contraindication information lacks “a prominence and readability reasonably comparable” with effectiveness information. In judging that, the rule takes into account factors such as typography, layout, contrast, headlines, paragraphing and white space. Most of those are set in the template.

We see balance as part of the persuasion. A physician often reads promotion for what it leaves out. A page with its risks beside its claims can give that reader less to doubt. The danger is a layout that buries risk by accident. On a laptop, the Important Safety Information, the summary of risks, sits beside the claim. On a phone, the same layout can push it four screens down.

Figure 1

A layout that keeps risk beside the claim on a laptop can bury it on a phone

One layout, designed for a laptop, seen on both screens.

Phones and laptops part ways at breakpoints, the screen widths where a layout rearranges. On the site built for the two specialties, Important Safety Information was designed to hold position alongside promotional content at every breakpoint. Full Prescribing Information was designed to stay within reach from every page. The site’s templates, components and copy decks were structured for medical, legal and regulatory review.

On the other launch, the build made room for safety information, Prescribing Information routing and promotional review from the first template. In practice, the template carries the safety information, the Prescribing Information link and the claim layout, so every page inherits them.

Who should get through each gate?

An approved product’s site often carries content meant for some readers and closed to others, and gates decide who can open each path. A checkbox, called attestation, asks readers to confirm that they are healthcare professionals and takes them at their word. On the site built for the two specialties, the professional side opened on attestation.

A verified gate checks each physician’s credentials first, and the other launch needed one. Its reading physicians needed on-demand education on the agent’s scans, and that education had to reach licensed physicians only. So the education program, built into the product site, opened only to physicians whose credentials verified against a live third-party record. One property carried the brand, the clinical case and the education program, and a physician verified once to reach the material they needed.

The gates differed as the content behind them did, with attestation for a professional track and verified credentials for education. Your regulatory and legal teams decide which gate each path needs.

What does the site need after launch day?

A record. After launch come new data, label updates and questions from the field team, and each change usually goes back through review. The same draft guidance says a company should submit its entire static product website at first use. After a substantial revision, it should submit the whole site again. The guidance adds that a company updating one page or section can submit only the update, with a cross-reference to the original filing.

On the design side, we build version control into the template. On the site built for the two specialties, every asset carried its number, its reference code. Reference codes rendered on the page, and versions tracked back to the approved artifact.

Figure 2

Four jobs, one template

A product page on a phone. Each tag names the design job a block does.

What should the team decide this quarter?

Picture the review meeting again, this time with the templates approved first. The medical reviewer scrolls the phone view and finds the safety information under the headline. The legal reviewer sees the gate, and the regulatory reviewer reads the reference code off the page. Each new page is still reviewed, starting from parts already approved. A label change can reopen them.

Four decisions, in order.

1. Settle one argument before the pages. Agree on the claims that hold for every reader, then give each audience its own track.
2. Bring the review committee in at the templates. Ask it to approve the safety information block, the Prescribing Information link and the claim layout at every screen size, before the first page.
3. Match each gate to what sits behind it. With your regulatory and legal teams, decide which paths open on attestation and which call for verified credentials.
4. Put the reference code on every page. Trace each version to its approved original, and name one owner for the list of live pages.

On Monday, ask the team three questions. On a phone, how far does a reader scroll from the efficacy headline to its safety information? Which pages verify credentials, and which take the reader’s word? If the dosing page changed today, who would send the new version to the FDA?

If it takes a meeting to answer them, your templates could be doing more of the work.

At jscTEK, we understand product launches. More of what we build is on our Work page.

Sources

1. The sites a company answers for, and what it submits. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, “Fulfilling Regulatory Requirements for Postmarketing Submissions of Interactive Promotional Media for Prescription Human and Animal Drugs and Biologics,” draft guidance for industry, January 2014, docket FDA-2013-N-1430, marked “Contains Nonbinding Recommendations.” Footnote 6 covers static materials such as a static product website. Still listed as a draft on FDA’s guidance page, content current as of January 3, 2019. Accessed October 18, 2026.
2. The design factors in the rule. 21 CFR 202.1(e)(7)(viii), “Prescription-drug advertisements,” Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of October 15, 2026. Accessed October 18, 2026.
3. The web accessibility standard. W3C, “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1,” W3C Recommendation, this version dated May 6, 2025, including Success Criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content (Level A) and Success Criterion 1.4.5 Images of Text (Level AA). Accessed October 18, 2026.

Referral sources, the physicians, discharge planners and office staff who send you patients, often read your website with a patient waiting. They tend to ask whether you can take the patient, how the referral reaches you and whether to trust you. Your intake team likely knows most of the answers, so the page that publishes them needs an owner in operations.

Picture a discharge planner late on a Thursday. A patient goes home tomorrow, the family wants home health, and the planner has a list of agencies to work through. The patient chooses an agency, often from that list, and the planner checks who can take the case. For every name on the list, one answer comes first. Can you take this patient?

Across town, a cardiology office is sending a scan order and wants to know how. Elsewhere, a physician who just met your liaison is still deciding whether to trust you with a patient at all. Three people bring three questions to one website, and each can end in a referral that fills your schedule and census.

Intake usually holds those answers, from the plans you accept and where you serve to who confirms a referral. The website’s job is to put those answers one click from any page. Since intake holds the facts, we would treat the referral page as an operations asset that happens to live on the marketing site. It tends to stay accurate while someone in operations owns it.

Can you take this patient?

The first question is fit, and fit is specific. It means this patient, this coverage, this address and this week. So the page names what you treat and the plans you accept, shows where you serve and states how soon care can start. Place and timing weigh on referral choices. A 2022 review of seven US studies found location, scheduling and patient preference among the factors referring providers cite most when choosing specialists.

Each line of care adds its own facts. A behavioral health program adds the ages and levels of care it serves. A hospice adds how soon it can admit, weekends included. Publish those times in wording compliance has approved.

Home health shows how much rides on the map. Medicare’s discharge planning rule binds hospitals. For a patient referred to home health, the hospital must list available Medicare-participating agencies that serve the patient’s area, as each agency defines it. The rule adds that home health agencies “must request to be listed by the hospital as available.” If your website draws a different map from the one the hospital holds, the planner can face two answers and a phone call. Each rule cited here names who it binds, and your regulatory and legal teams decide how it applies to you. This piece looks at the website.

Fit facts go stale quietly. A dropped plan can sit on the payer page all summer, until an office sends a patient on the strength of it. Growth tests the page’s owner hardest, since a new location or an add-on brand can launch with last year’s payer list.

How do I send this patient?

The second question is the route. An office ready to refer should reach it in one click from any page, ideally through a “Refer a patient” link in the header. From there, the best referral page behaves like your best intake coordinator and takes the referral however the office sends it.

That still includes paper. In 2025, nearly three in four general acute care hospitals mailed or faxed care summaries, at least sometimes, for patients leaving their system. So the page offers a secure online form, a fax number with a printable form and the intake line with its hours. Offices that refer from their EHR find your Direct address, a secure messaging address many EHRs support, and the referral platforms you accept. The form sends patient details straight to intake, and your privacy officer decides which tags and tools run on the referral path.

Like a good coordinator, the page also tells the office what to send and what happens next. Who confirms the referral, how soon, and who handles prior authorization? We build intake on one rule, as few steps as the questions allow. A form that asks for the same details twice can spend goodwill your liaison worked hard to earn.

Figure 2

A referral page that answers all three questions

One click from every page. Each number marks a block, and each tag names the question it answers.

The last reader is the patient, and referrals can stall there. In an academic primary care network, from mid-2015 to mid-2016, nearly one in five patients referred to specialists declined to schedule or were unreachable. The records left the declines unexplained. We read that as a gap a good page can help close. Where it fits, the office sends the patient one link, with the nearest location, what to bring and a way to book.

Every route on the page has to open for every reader. The page, the form and the patient’s link all have to work on a phone and with a keyboard or screen reader. That is good service, and for some providers a federal rule also sets a standard. HHS’s Section 504 rule will require recipients of HHS financial assistance to meet WCAG 2.1 AA, a web accessibility standard, with some exceptions. That includes content provided “through contractual, licensing, or other arrangements.”

For recipients with 15 or more employees, compliance begins May 11, 2027, after an interim final rule extended the date by one year. For smaller recipients, it begins May 10, 2028, and HHS plans further rulemaking on the rule’s requirements.

Can I trust you with this patient?

The third question is trust, and a provider earns it twice, before the first referral and after every one.

Before the first referral, a physician often wants to know who will care for the patient. So show the clinicians, their credentials, your accreditations and any public quality data. That data has other readers too. Medicare’s discharge planning rule requires hospitals to share quality and resource use data as patients choose where to go after the hospital. Any quality data on your site should match its public source, named and dated.

After the referral, trust often rests on what comes back, and the two sides see it differently. In a 2008 national survey, four in five specialists said they usually sent their results back. Only three in five primary care physicians said they usually received them.

Medicare’s quality program for clinicians includes a measure for that loop, for those who choose to report it. Its 2026 version tracks how often the referring clinician receives a report from the clinician the patient was referred to. The measure’s guidance says the referring clinician “should be held accountable for the performance of this measure.” In our view, that is one more reason to say how results come back. Where privacy rules allow, say on the site how updates reach the referring clinician, by portal, fax or a named contact, and how fast.

Trust can also depend on the site and your liaisons saying the same thing. For a client working with imaging centers and physicians, we rebuilt the website as the surface every other channel points back to. A brochure, a booth conversation and a social profile all end in the same place. A practice manager who meets that client at a conference, on a leave-behind and on the site meets one description, three times. Repetition is what turns a description into a position.

What should the team change this quarter?

Three decisions, in order.

1. Walk the referral path the way your referral sources do. Start from a search, a leave-behind and, for home health, a hospital’s agency list, and count the clicks to each answer. Then track referrals by route in your intake system, and how long each waits.
2. Give the referral page an owner in operations. Intake holds the facts, so intake reviews them on a set date, and every new location launches with its page complete.
3. Make the site and your liaisons say the same thing, in approved words. Add how updates come back and a named contact for each territory.

On Monday, ask the team three questions. If a discharge planner opened our site right now, how many clicks would it take to find our service area and payers? Where does an online referral go, and who answers it? When did someone last check the fax number, payers and hours on every location page?

Whoever can answer that last question is the page’s real owner today, whatever the org chart says.

At jscTEK, we understand how healthcare buyers decide. Our clients include a company that works with imaging centers and physicians to expand their molecular imaging programs.

Sources

1. What referring providers weigh. Caitlin B. Finn and others, “How Referring Providers Choose Specialists for Their Patients: a Systematic Review,” Journal of General Internal Medicine, volume 37, issue 13, pages 3444 to 3452, April 19, 2022, a review of seven studies performed in the United States. Accessed October 17, 2026.
2. The discharge planning rule. 42 CFR 482.43, a condition of participation for hospitals in Medicare, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of October 15, 2026. Accessed October 17, 2026.
3. Hospitals sending care summaries by mail or fax. Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy (ONC), “Methods Used by Hospitals to Engage in Interoperable Exchange,” last updated February 2026, from the American Hospital Association IT Survey of non-federal general acute care hospitals, 2018-2025. In 2025, for mail or fax, 40 percent of hospitals answered often and 34 percent sometimes. Accessed October 17, 2026.
4. Referred patients who declined to schedule or were unreachable. Malhar P. Patel and others, “Closing the Referral Loop: an Analysis of Primary Care Referrals to Specialists in a Large Health System,” Journal of General Internal Medicine, volume 33, issue 5, pages 715 to 721, 2018, covering referrals from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016. Six percent of all referred patients could not be contacted to schedule, and 12 percent declined scheduling for unclear reasons, together 18 percent, nearly one in five. Accessed October 17, 2026.
5. What comes back to the referring physician. Ann S. O’Malley and James D. Reschovsky, “Referral and Consultation Communication Between Primary Care and Specialist Physicians: Finding Common Ground,” Archives of Internal Medicine 171(1), 2011, from the 2008 Center for Studying Health System Change Health Tracking Physician Survey. In it, 80.6 percent of specialists said they always or most of the time send consultation results to the referring physician, and 62.2 percent of primary care physicians said they always or most of the time received such information. Accessed October 17, 2026.
6. Closing the referral loop as a quality measure. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, eCQI Resource Center, “Closing the Referral Loop: Receipt of Specialist Report,” CMS50v14, 2026 performance period, reported in MIPS. Accessed October 17, 2026.
7. The web accessibility standard, who it covers and the compliance dates. 45 CFR 84.84, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of October 15, 2026 (89 FR 40193, May 9, 2024, as amended at 91 FR 25507, May 11, 2026). Compliance begins May 11, 2027 for recipients with fifteen or more employees, and May 10, 2028 for fewer. Accessed October 17, 2026.
8. Exceptions to the standard. 45 CFR 84.85, “Exceptions,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, covering archived web content, preexisting conventional electronic documents, content posted by a third party, individualized password-protected or otherwise secured documents, and preexisting social media posts. Accessed October 25, 2026.
9. The 2026 extension and further rulemaking. HHS Office for Civil Rights, “Extension of Compliance Dates for Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Applications of Recipients of Departmental Financial Assistance,” interim final rule, 91 FR 25496, May 11, 2026, the latest Federal Register action found on October 17, 2026. Accessed October 17, 2026.

A board asks what a launch returns before it approves the plan, and again at every review after. The answer shapes what the board funds, when the next financing comes and where the field team spends its time. A launch ahead of plan draws few questions. When it falls behind, the board needs to see which part of the return fell short before it funds a fix. In the illustrative launch below, physicians order a little above plan, and most of the first-year shortfall sits with 16 sites still getting ready.

The first-year review opens with revenue at $3.8 million against a plan of $4.7 million. Payback has slipped from Year 2 into Year 3, and one board member already has a fix, another $1 million of promotion. It sounds right, because fewer orders than planned look like a demand problem, and promotion is how a launch builds demand.

Before the money moves, the board needs one answer. Are physicians ordering less, or are fewer sites ready to perform the scan? The answer decides where the next dollar goes. A launch like this one is often a bet on sites before it is a bet on physicians.

Why does a readiness gap look like weak demand?

Every dose of a new PET agent needs a site ready to perform the scan and a physician or other practitioner who orders it. Revenue counts doses, so it shows only whether the dose happened. On the revenue line, a site still in setup looks just like a site whose physicians stick with today’s scan.

Count the sites in this launch, and the picture changes. Of the 80 sites the plan counted on by year end, 64 are ready, and their physicians order a little more than planned. The shortfall sits with the other 16, still waiting on internal approval, a contract, training or billing.

Chart 1

Sixteen of the 80 sites the plan counted on are still in setup

End of Year 1. One dot per site the plan expected to be ready.

Demand is doing its part, and readiness is the larger gap. Readiness can also move slowly. At a hospital, adding a new agent waits on internal approval processes, while at an imaging center the decision often rests with fewer people. Where the label calls for an education program, reading physicians complete it before they read the first scan.

What does slow readiness do to the return?

In this launch, a ready site returns about $13,000 a quarter after dose costs. That puts the price of waiting at about $210,000 a quarter for the 16 sites in setup. Yet the pace costs more than the wait. This launch gets four sites ready for every five the plan expects, so the shortfall widens every quarter.

Chart 2

At today’s pace, the gap grows from 16 sites to 57

Sites ready to order, by quarter of sales.

At this pace, the shortfall reaches 57 sites by the end of Year 3, and the price of waiting more than triples. If the first-year pattern holds, net return reaches $7.8 million by then, against the plan’s $13.8 million. Slow readiness accounts for about $5 million of that gap.

Chart 3

Slow readiness drives most of the miss

Net return by the end of Year 3, in $ millions, before R&D, fixed manufacturing and overhead.

Two other forces pull in opposite directions. Extra orders at ready sites win some of the gap back, though the first sites to get ready may be the most eager. The launch also nets $120 a dose less than planned, a gap finance can trace to channel fees, access terms or payment status.

Price carries an assumption of its own. Both the plan and the forecast hold net price flat through Year 3. That assumes Medicare’s hospital outpatient pass-through payment runs the full three years the law allows, from the first dose. After it, CMS pays a diagnostic radiopharmaceutical separately above a per-day cost threshold, $655 in 2026. A shorter term, or a lower rate after it, can change Year 3 price. Your market access and legal teams decide how these rules apply.

Where should the next $1 million go?

In this launch, the next dollar has better odds where it moves slowest, so we would put the $1 million into readiness first. It pays field and market access teams to support each site’s internal approval, contract, training and billing through Year 2, as compliance allows.

Suppose that spending restores the plan’s pace and clears the 16 during Year 2. By the end of Year 3, it can then add $3.2 million of net return, after paying for itself. Most of that gain arrives in Year 3, after the money stops. Payback can come back to the last quarter of Year 2, one quarter behind plan, though only by about $60,000. Two fewer new ready sites in Year 2 would leave it in Year 3.

With the same money, clearing the 16 sites in setup alone adds only about $0.4 million, also after its cost. The backlog is the visible problem; the pace is the expensive one.

The money could also go to promotion, and the board can hold either use to a test.

Chart 4

Each use of the $1 million has a test to pass

Either one can add $3.2 million of net return by the end of Year 3, if it passes.

The readiness test asks for the pace the board already approved, plus the 16 in setup. In Year 2, that means 151 new ready sites, about 40 percent more than today’s pace would deliver.

The promotion test asks more of physicians. To match readiness, the share of ready sites ordering would have to jump 13 points and hold there. In the first year, that share beat plan by about one point. A jump that size runs into how the scan gets ordered.

A referring physician tends to order the scan when it answers a clinical question better than today’s option, with guidelines and coverage behind it. The reading physician has to trust the image. Where agents compete, the imaging department’s protocol and supply contract can decide which one fills the order.

Marketing works on both sides. It finds the physicians whose patients fit, speaks to each one’s clinical question within the label and builds the reading physician’s confidence. With market access, it also equips readiness, with the evidence a site’s internal approval process reviews and the billing guide a site needs. Promotion still earns its place when aimed at physicians who refer to ready sites, because that can turn readiness into orders.

What can the board see before revenue arrives?

Readiness and demand both show up before revenue does. The field lead can count ready sites every week. To see demand site by site, add dose data rights to any manufacturing or distribution agreement that lacks them, now or at renewal. Your legal team decides the terms.

Two signals then sort the sites. A site waiting on approval or billing has a readiness gap. A ready site that keeps moving its first scan date may have a demand gap.

Last, set one alarm. Any drift in readiness, demand or price that costs a tenth of the planned return goes to the board.

What should the team decide this quarter?

Three decisions, in order.

1. Split the Year 1 gap into readiness, demand and price before approving new promotion.
2. Where readiness drives the gap, fix the readiness process and clear the backlog together. Sort the sites in setup by blocker, each with an owner and a date.
3. Aim new promotion at physicians who refer to ready sites, once readiness is back on pace.

On Monday, ask the team three questions. How many target sites are ready to order today, against plan? What is holding up the rest, site by site? Which ready sites have yet to place a first order, and why?

If the answers come slowly, the board is funding an estimate.

At jscTEK, we understand product launches, and our work includes these three.

• An FDA launch, from pre-launch positioning and build through two years of operation.
• A physician targeting analysis built from federal claims data, then a market entry model for the United States and Europe.
• A commercial plan for the United States market, then the brand system and platform built to carry it. The plan set the segments, the targets and the forecast the launch was measured against. The numbers stay with the client.

Sources

1. CMS instituted pass-through payments for new diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals. Marwood Group, “Diagnostic Radiopharmacy: Overview And Market Access Considerations,” Mark Slomiany, April 4, 2023. Accessed October 11, 2026.
2. Transitional pass-through payments for a drug or biological last at least two and at most three years. CMS, “Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS),” page modified March 10, 2026. Accessed October 11, 2026.
3. Separate payment above a per-day cost threshold once pass-through ends; at or below it, the cost is packaged. Sidley Austin LLP, “Medicare Payment Policy Final Rule for Outpatient Setting Addresses Radiopharmaceuticals, Skin Substitutes, and 340B Program Key Topics,” December 2, 2025. Accessed October 25, 2026.
4. The 2026 threshold, $655 a day, up from $630. Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, “CMS Releases Final CY 2026 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS): Implications for Nuclear Medicine,” November 24, 2025. Accessed October 25, 2026.