Patient acquisition cost has quietly climbed from roughly $200 to $312 since 2022. That is a 56% increase in three years, according to First Page Sage's 2026 Patient Acquisition Cost Report and MFG Wellness benchmark data.
Most practices have not noticed. Revenue is still coming in. The waiting room is not empty. The phones still ring. Nothing visibly broke.
But the math underneath changed fundamentally. The same marketing setup that worked in 2022 now costs significantly more to deliver the same number of patients. And three separate forces are compounding that pressure simultaneously.
This article lays out the numbers, explains what is driving them, and outlines what healthcare organizations can do about it without overhauling everything at once.
The Numbers at a Glance
Before diving into the why, here is the current state of patient acquisition costs across channels and specialties.
| Metric | 2022 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average patient acquisition cost | Sub-$200 | $312 | +56% |
| Competitive specialties (ortho, aesthetics) | $250-$350 | $400-$600 | +60-70% |
| Google Ads avg. CPC (all industries) | $4.01 | ~$5.12 | +28% |
| Google Ads CPC (healthcare) | Varies by specialty | +40-60% vs. 2022 | Significant |
| "Dentist near me" CPC | $6-$15 | $12-$45 | Up to 3x |
| Specialized procedure CPC | $80-$120 | $200+ | +65-100% |
| Facebook cost per lead (healthcare) | $20-$35 | $30-$50+ | +20% YoY |
Sources include WordStream 2025 Benchmarks, Search Engine Land CPC Inflation Report, First Page Sage PAC Report 2026, and ThinkPod Meta Ads analysis. These are industry averages. Individual practices may vary, but the direction is universal: up.
If your marketing was set up in 2022 and nobody has revisited the channel mix or cost structure since, you are almost certainly paying 40-60% more per patient than you need to. The increase happened gradually enough that it does not show up as a single alarming spike in any monthly report.
Why It Is Happening: Three Forces at Once
This is not a single trend. Three separate forces converged between 2023 and 2025, and they are compounding each other. Understanding all three matters because fixing one without addressing the others will not stop the cost climb.
Force 1: Ad Platform Inflation
Google Ads average cost-per-click across all industries went from $4.01 in 2022 to an estimated $5.12 in 2025, according to WordStream benchmarks. That is a 28% increase in three years at the industry-wide level.
Healthcare specifically got hit harder. CPC for healthcare keywords increased 40-60% over the same period. A click on "dentist near me" that cost $8 in 2022 can now cost $12-$45 depending on the market. Specialized procedure terms like "knee replacement surgeon" or "rhinoplasty consultation" routinely exceed $200 per click.
The trend is not slowing down. WordStream data shows that 87% of industries saw CPC increases in 2025. This is structural inflation baked into the platform, not a temporary fluctuation.
Facebook tells a similar story. Cost per lead on Meta platforms increased approximately 20% year-over-year in 2025, with healthcare CPL landing in the $30-$50+ range. Meanwhile, ThinkPod's Meta Ads analysis found that conversion rates decreased in 80% of industries. You are paying more and getting less.
Force 2: AI Eating Organic Traffic
This is the one that blindsides most practices because it does not show up in standard SEO reports.
Google's AI Overviews now appear on 43% of healthcare queries according to BrightEdge's Healthcare AI Evolution study. That is the highest percentage of any industry. For treatment and procedure queries specifically, the number is 100%. Every single treatment query now has an AI-generated answer at the top of the page.
| AI Search Metric | Current Data | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Zero-click searches (all queries) | 69% | Was 56% in May 2024 |
| Healthcare queries with AI Overview | 43% | Highest of any industry |
| Treatment/procedure queries with AI Overview | 100% | Was 45% in 2023 |
| Organic CTR drop when AI Overview appears | -61% | Position #1: 1.76% to 0.61% |
| Paid CTR drop when AI Overview appears | -68% | Even ads get pushed down |
| Global Google traffic to publishers (YoY) | -33% | Structural shift, not a dip |
Sources: Digital Bloom 2025 Organic Traffic Crisis Report, Dataslayer AI Overview Impact 2025, All About AI Visibility Statistics 2026, Position.digital.
A healthcare website that ranked #1 for "rotator cuff surgery recovery" and got 500 visitors per month in 2023 now gets 195-315 visitors from the same position. Not because the ranking dropped. Because Google answers the question without sending the click.
The SEO agency still reports the same ranking. The monthly report looks fine. But the actual patients reaching your site through that keyword dropped by 40-60%. This is the gap that makes the cost-per-patient math quietly fall apart.
Healthcare has an 83% zero-click rate when AI Overview appears on a query, according to Dataslayer's 2025 analysis. That is the highest of any sector measured. The practical consequence: organic traffic strategies designed before 2024 are operating in a fundamentally different environment.
Force 3: More Money, Less Result
Here is where the picture gets particularly uncomfortable. The industry response to rising costs has been to spend more. According to eMarketer, healthcare digital advertising spend reached $24.77 billion in 2025, a 13.3% year-over-year increase. Promodo's Healthcare Digital Marketing Benchmarks found that 88% of healthcare marketers plan to increase their digital budget in 2026.
But at the same time, marketing budget as a percentage of revenue actually decreased from 9.6% in 2023 to 7.2% in 2024. The industry is pouring more absolute dollars into digital while the relative investment in marketing is shrinking. More spend, more competition for the same ad placements, same or fewer patients.
This is the treadmill effect. Everyone is running faster just to stay in place. The practices that win are not the ones spending the most. They are the ones spending most efficiently.
What This Means for Your Practice
If your marketing infrastructure was established before 2024, it was built for a different cost environment. That does not mean it was built badly. It means the rules changed.
Consider what a typical multi-channel healthcare marketing setup looks like when you account for these shifts:
- Google Ads: Same campaigns, same keywords, but CPC is 40-60% higher. Your cost per patient through this channel increased even though the campaign structure is identical.
- SEO / Organic: Same rankings, same content, but 40-60% fewer clicks reaching your site due to AI Overviews absorbing the traffic. Your SEO agency correctly reports steady rankings. The missing piece is the click-through rate collapse that happens before anyone reaches your domain.
- Facebook / Meta: CPL up 20% year-over-year, conversion rates down in 80% of industries. The funnel leaks more at every stage.
- Referral / Word-of-mouth: Still works. Still the most cost-effective channel. But it does not scale on demand, which is why practices lean on paid and organic to fill gaps.
Nobody is lying to you. Each agency and each channel reports their own metrics accurately. The problem is that nobody reports how the channels interact. Where they overlap. Where they contradict each other. Where money falls between the cracks.
The 56% cost increase is not visible in any single channel report. It only becomes apparent when you pull all your channels side by side and calculate the actual, all-in cost per patient. Most practices have never done this because each vendor reports independently.
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Get Your Free CheckWhat to Do About It
The goal here is not to overhaul everything. It is to find the specific places where the cost increase hit your practice hardest and fix those first. Here are the five highest-impact actions based on the data above.
1. Pull All Channel Reports Side by Side
Get your Google Ads report, your SEO traffic report, your social media metrics, and your referral data into one view. Not separate PDFs from separate agencies. One spreadsheet. One table. Look for two things: overlaps (where you are paying twice for the same patient) and gaps (where patients drop off between channels).
This single exercise, which most practices have never done, tends to reveal 15-30% of budget that can be reallocated immediately.
2. Check for Google Ads and SEO Keyword Overlap
One of the most common findings in cross-channel analysis: Google Ads bidding on keywords that your SEO already ranks in position 1-3 for. If your organic listing is already at the top, paying for ads on that same keyword is redundant spend.
This is not rare. In one case, a practice was spending $4,200 per month on ads for keywords where organic search already held the top position. That is $50,400 per year in avoidable overlap. Neither the SEO agency nor the ads agency flagged it because each only looks at their own channel.
3. Audit Your Landing Page Conversion Rate
If your landing page converts at under 5%, that is the single highest-ROI fix available. A page converting at 2% means 98 out of every 100 visitors leave without booking. Moving that to 5-8% means the same traffic generates 2.5-4x more patients.
This is where cost-per-patient drops dramatically without increasing ad spend by a single dollar. The traffic is already there. The conversion is where it leaks.
Many practices have not updated their landing pages in 18+ months. A page built in 2022 was optimized for 2022 patient behavior, 2022 search patterns, and 2022 mobile expectations. Page speed, form length, mobile responsiveness, and trust signals all need periodic review.
4. Calculate Actual Cost Per Patient Per Channel
Not cost per click. Not cost per impression. Not cost per lead. Cost per patient who actually booked and showed up.
This requires connecting your ad spend data to your patient management system, which most practices have not done. But the insight is invaluable. You may find that one channel costs $180 per patient and another costs $700 for the same type of appointment. Without this number, budget allocation is guesswork.
5. Start Thinking About AEO (AI Engine Optimisation)
If 43% of healthcare queries now surface an AI Overview, your content strategy needs to account for it. This is a newer discipline sometimes called Answer Engine Optimisation or AI Engine Optimisation. The principle: structure your content so that AI systems reference and cite your site when generating answers.
Practices that adapt their content for AI visibility now will capture the traffic that competitors are losing to zero-click searches. This is not a replacement for traditional SEO. It is an additional layer that most healthcare marketers have not yet implemented.
The Bottom Line
Patient acquisition cost rose 56% in three years. Ad platforms got more expensive. AI absorbed a significant portion of organic traffic. And the industry response has been to spend more money into the same channels without adjusting the strategy.
None of this means your marketing was set up incorrectly. It means the environment changed. What worked in 2022 was right for 2022. The practices that adjust to the 2025-2026 reality will spend less per patient and grow faster. The ones that do not will keep paying more for the same result, quarter after quarter, without understanding why.
The data is clear. The adjustments are specific. And most of them do not require increasing your budget. They require looking at the full picture across channels and making the existing spend work harder.
The 56% increase is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to look at your numbers with fresh eyes. Most practices have significant efficiency gains available within their current budget. The first step is knowing your actual cost per patient per channel. Everything else follows from that.
