Should clinics list prices online?

Patients search for the price before they pick a clinic. Here is what happened when a medical centre published 400+ real prices, and how to show prices for programs, packages and consult-only services.

A private medical centre in the Caribbean, whose website I built, reached the top 5 on Google for "how much for a ct scan in [country]" and "cost of ct scan in [country]" within its first 12 weeks. It ranked for those because it published its prices, and the "call us for a quote" sites around it did not.

The price list beat the articles

The centre put its full price list online: over 400 services, each with a real price. We also wrote more than 40 plain-language articles. In the first 12 weeks those articles together brought almost no visits. The pages that brought people in were the homepage and the price list, filtered by category. CT scans was the biggest category, then the full list, then the urology screening page, ultrasound and procedures.

The site does not have a separate page for every service. It has one honest list that people can filter, and that list ranked for cost searches. I expected the articles to do more. They didn't.

You can read the full story in the medical centre case study. For which page types tend to rank for clinics, see the pages that actually ranked.

Patients want the number and can't find it

A national survey of 2,996 US adults published in Health Affairs found that only 13% of people with out-of-pocket costs looked up their expected spending before care, and just 3% compared prices between providers. That isn't because they don't care. Most respondents said price shopping is important, and one of the most common barriers was how hard it was to get price information at all.

For a cash-pay clinic, that barrier is your own website. If your page says "contact us for pricing" and the clinic across town shows a number, the person searching "how much is..." goes to the clinic that answered.

You are already doing this work one patient at a time. Under federal rules, providers must give a good faith estimate to patients not using insurance who ask for one or book at least 3 business days ahead.

How to show a price when it varies

Owners often tell me their prices can't go online because "it depends." Usually some of the price depends on the patient and some of it doesn't. Publish the part that doesn't.

Programs. "From $X a month" only works if the reader can see what that covers: visits, check-ins, labs. If medication is billed separately, say so on the same line. A from-price that turns out to leave out the biggest cost loses you more trust than having no price. There is more on this in weight loss clinic website essentials.

Packages. Put the package price next to the single-session price so people can see the difference without asking.

Consult-only services. If you can't price the treatment until you've seen the patient, publish the consult fee. Say what the consult covers and whether the fee comes off the treatment, if that's your policy. Only give a treatment range if your real prices mostly fall inside it.

Where this goes wrong

Out-of-date prices are worse than none. If a patient arrives quoting your website and you charge more, your front desk has to sort that out. Give one person the job of keeping the list current and show a "prices updated" date on the page.

Competitors will see your prices. They could already phone and ask.

Put a way to act next to the prices. At the medical centre, taps to call doubled from August to September and WhatsApp taps rose about 2.5 times. Google Ads started on 18 August, though, so not all of that came from the price list. Its website chat assistant also answers price questions, and it takes the person's details first so the front desk can follow up.

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