Orthopedics · Reference Guide
Marketing & Growth Glossary
37 terms across 8 categories — marketing, patient acquisition, access and scheduling, referrals, orthopedic specialty context, attribution, financial performance, and reporting analytics.
Marketing
Marketing Spend
Total qualifying marketing investment assigned to the selected reporting scope under HIQOR campaign mapping.
It is the denominator behind every cost and return metric, so mapping accuracy drives everything downstream.
Source
Where the inquiry originated — for example Google, website, phone, referral, partner, or organic.
Channel
The broader grouping a source belongs to — paid search, organic, social, direct, or referral.
Campaign
The Marketing Tracker campaign or ad group associated with the inquiry, where available.
Attribution
The rules that connect a marketing interaction to a lead, and that lead to a patient and a completed visit.
Without attribution, marketing can only report clicks and calls — not patients.
Patient Acquisition
CPL (Cost per Lead)
Marketing spend divided by qualifying marketing-attributed leads.
Cost metrics use practice or market targets rather than a single national orthopedic standard.
Cost per Scheduled New Patient
Marketing spend divided by marketing-attributed scheduled new patients.
Cost per Completed New Patient
Marketing spend divided by marketing-attributed completed new patients.
It is the honest acquisition cost — it only counts patients who actually arrived.
Conversion Rate
The share of an origin cohort that reaches the next stage — lead to scheduled, lead to completed, scheduled to completed.
Lead Cohort
Leads grouped by creation date so conversion follows the same people as they mature.
Do not divide one period's appointments by the same period's leads.
Access & Scheduling
Appointment Lead Time
Days between booking a qualifying new-patient appointment and the visit itself.
Long lead times quietly convert marketing spend into no-shows and cancellations.
No-Show Rate
The share of qualifying new-patient appointments where the patient did not arrive.
Third Next Available
A standard availability measure of the third open new-patient slot.
Requires historical open-slot availability snapshots, so it is not available on every integration.
Scheduling Method
How the appointment was created — staff-scheduled, self-scheduled online, or other.
Referrals
Referral Leakage
Referred demand that never becomes a completed orthopedic evaluation.
Leaked referrals are already-won demand; recovering them costs no additional marketing spend.
Active Referring Provider
A referring clinician who sent qualifying referrals during the reporting period.
Referral Age
How long a referral has been open without being scheduled or closed.
Authorization Status
Where payer approval stands — not required, pending, approved, denied, or expired.
Orthopedic Specialty
Subspecialty
Sports, spine, hand/wrist, foot/ankle, hip/knee, shoulder/elbow, trauma/fracture, pediatrics, PM&R, and similar clinical focus areas.
Routing to the wrong subspecialty looks like a conversion problem but is a triage problem.
Body Region
The anatomical area of the inquiry, used for acquisition analysis and call intelligence enrichment.
Case Type
Standard, workers' compensation, MVA / third-party liability, and similar intake pathways.
Attribution
Marketing-Attributed
An event matched to a qualifying marketing lead or source under HIQOR attribution rules.
First-Visit Attribution
Charges and collections tied to the first qualifying completed orthopedic evaluation.
V1 excludes downstream surgery, procedures, and lifetime value.
Lead-to-Patient Matching
The process of connecting a marketing lead to the patient record it became.
Financial
Production
Qualifying gross charges posted for services, using service date.
Production is charge value, not revenue and not cash.
Collections
Qualifying payments posted or applied during the period.
Net Collection Rate
The share of collectible earned value actually collected, following published medical-practice benchmarks.
A/R
Accounts receivable — earned value not yet collected.
Days in A/R
Average days earned value remains outstanding.
ROAS
Marketing-attributed first-visit collections divided by qualifying marketing spend.
ROI
Marketing-attributed first-visit collections less marketing spend, as a percentage return.
Marketing return before clinical and operating costs, and before downstream value.
Reporting / Analytics
Benchmark Provenance
The label describing where a threshold comes from — authoritative standard, published industry benchmark, HIQOR recommended, or practice-related target.
It tells you how much weight a colour deserves in a leadership conversation.
Minimum Sample
The event volume a KPI needs before it is scored Green, Yellow, or Red.
Low Sample
Value shown, performance rating withheld because volume is below the minimum.
Cohort Not Mature
The cohort has not had enough elapsed time to complete the conversion cycle.
Descriptive Metric
A count, spend, charge, or mix metric that receives no absolute colour rating.
Roll-Up Hierarchy
Enterprise / MSO › Region › Practice › Location › Provider, subject to the available client hierarchy.