PHI
Protected health information: any health detail that can be tied to an identifiable patient, including the fact that a person booked a specific appointment.
Healthcare PPC management for medical practices
Healthcare PPC management is running a practice's Google Ads and Meta Ads so that paid clicks turn into booked, attended appointments, inside HIPAA and the ad platforms' health rules. For a medical practice, those rules limit the account before the budget does: no remarketing to patients on Google, blocked conversion events on Meta, and no tracking pixel on the patient portal.
- Flat monthly fee from $900 — and no setup fee, on any tier.
- Month to month. Thirty days' notice, no cancellation fee.
- You own every ad account, pixel and conversion history.
- Tracking installed and verified before any spend begins.
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01 — The short answer
What is different about PPC for a medical practice?
Eloari manages Google Ads and Meta Ads for medical practices across the United States for a flat monthly fee starting at $900, with no setup fee and no long-term contract. The practice owns every ad account, and the fee is never a percentage of ad spend.
Most industries are limited by budget and competition. Healthcare is limited first by what you are allowed to know about the people who click. Google treats health as a sensitive interest category, so a practice cannot build its own remarketing or Customer Match lists to promote health services. Meta has blocked standard conversion events for many health advertisers since January 2025. And patient-facing pages that sit behind a login are still covered by HIPAA, so a pixel that fires there can put the practice in front of a regulator or a class-action lawyer.
The practical result: a healthcare account has to win on search intent (people already asking for the service), on clean measurement (booked and attended appointments, imported without health details), and on the front desk answering the phone. Those three decide cost per new patient far more than bid tweaks do.
BAA
Business associate agreement: the HIPAA contract a covered practice needs with any vendor that receives PHI on its behalf.
Sensitive category
Google's label for topics such as health, where advertiser-built audiences and Customer Match are not allowed.
Offline conversion
A booking or visit recorded in your own system and sent back to Google as a click ID, a status and a value, with no diagnosis attached.
LegitScript
The third-party certifier Google requires before US telemedicine, online pharmacy and addiction treatment ads can run.
Top-of-page bid
The range advertisers paid to show above the organic results for a search, as reported by Google Keyword Planner.
02 — What patients search
What do patients search, and what does a click cost?
In the United States, "urgent care near me" is searched about 4,090,000 times a month, with top-of-page bids of $1.58 to $7.55. "Weight loss clinic near me" gets about 40,500 searches a month, but bids run from $10.32 to $38.75 (Google Keyword Planner, October 13, 2026).
The pattern in the data is consistent: services patients pay for out of pocket cost three to five times more per click than general and specialist care billed to insurance. A cash-pay clinic is bidding against national telehealth brands with large budgets; an insurance-driven practice is bidding against health systems and retail clinics whose names patients type directly ("citymd near me" and "minute clinic near me" each draw about 60,500 searches a month).
| Patient search (US) | Searches / month | Top-of-page bid |
|---|---|---|
| urgent care near me | 4,090,000 | $1.58 – $7.55 |
| dermatologist near me | 673,000 | $2.15 – $7.79 |
| walk in clinic near me | 201,000 | $1.57 – $6.94 |
| cardiologist near me | 90,500 | $1.69 – $7.24 |
| allergist near me | 60,500 | $2.29 – $10.00 |
| primary care doctor near me | 40,500 | $2.49 – $9.73 |
| sleep doctor near me | 22,200 | $2.54 – $10.06 |
| mental health clinic near me | 14,800 | $5.03 – $24.59 |
| trt therapy near me | 12,100 | $6.36 – $28.82 |
| weight loss clinic near me | 40,500 | $10.32 – $38.75 |
Source: Google Keyword Planner, United States, English, pulled October 13, 2026. "Top-of-page bid" is the low-to-high range advertisers paid to appear above the organic results. Your city will differ, which is why every build starts with a local pull for your own services and radius.
One more number worth knowing: "primary care doctors near me accepting new patients" is searched about 5,400 times a month nationally. A practice that is actually accepting new patients can say so in the ad, and that single phrase filters out a large share of people who would otherwise call and hang up.
03 — The four rules
Which rules shape a healthcare ad account?
Four sets of rules decide what a medical practice can track and target: HIPAA as applied by HHS to tracking technologies, Google's personalized-advertising policy, Meta's health and wellness data restrictions, and Google's healthcare certification requirements. None of them is optional, and none of them shows up in a generic PPC playbook.
| Rule | What it says | What it means for your ads |
|---|---|---|
| HIPAA and tracking | HHS guidance (December 2022, revised March 2024) treats tracking on patient pages as a HIPAA matter. On June 20, 2024, a Texas federal court (AHA v. Becerra) struck the part covering public, unauthenticated pages; HHS dropped its appeal on August 29, 2024. | No ad pixels on the patient portal, intake forms or anything behind a login. Public service pages are lower risk, but wiretap class actions continue. |
| Google personalized ads | Health is a sensitive interest category. Advertisers "are unable to use advertiser-curated audiences," and Customer Match is not supported for these promotions. | No remarketing to past visitors or patient lists. Search keywords and Google's own predefined audiences do the work. |
| Meta health data | Since January 2025, industry reports show Meta categorizing health advertisers and blocking standard lower-funnel events; a full restriction blocks custom events too. The status appears in Events Manager. | Meta's algorithm may not see who booked. Measure bookings in your own system and judge Meta on cost per booked visit, not in-platform results. |
| Google certification | US telemedicine and online pharmacies need LegitScript or NABP accreditation plus Google certification; addiction services need LegitScript certification. Experimental treatments are not allowed. | Prescribing, telehealth and recovery programs cannot launch until certification is approved. Plan weeks, not days. |
The stakes are real numbers, not theory. Advocate Aurora Health settled a pixel class action for $12,225,000, with final approval on July 10, 2024, covering more than 2.5 million people (E.D. Wisconsin). The FTC ordered GoodRx to pay a $1.5 million civil penalty in February 2023 for sharing health data with Facebook and Google, and BetterHelp to pay $7.8 million in March 2023. In Washington State, the My Health My Data Act has banned geofencing within 2,000 feet of a health care facility since July 23, 2023.
This page is not legal advice. Eloari is a paid media company, not a law firm. Your privacy counsel decides what your practice may collect; the ad account is then built to stay inside that line.
04 — The build
How should a medical practice account be built?
A medical practice account should be built measurement-first: audit what fires on which page, remove ad tags from anything behind a login, then send booked and attended appointments back to Google as offline conversions with no health details. Campaigns go live only after that loop is verified.
| Step | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Tag audit | Week 1 | List every pixel and tag on the site, the booking tool and the portal. Anything on an authenticated page comes off. Questions about vendors and BAAs go to your counsel with a written inventory. |
| Measurement loop | Week 1–2 | Calls and form requests are counted as leads; booked and attended appointments are imported from your scheduling or practice system as offline conversions. Only a click ID, a status and a value leave the building. |
| Search campaigns | Around day 14 | One campaign per service line and payer type, with negative keywords for plans you do not accept, jobs searches and symptom lookups that will never book. |
| Policy-safe copy | Launch | Ads describe the service, not the patient. Meta forbids ads that assert or imply a person's health condition, so "Struggling with your weight?" is out and "Medical weight-loss program in Tampa" is in. |
| First decisions | Day 21–30 | Budget moves toward the service lines with the lowest cost per attended visit, not the most clicks. Meaningful improvement usually shows in month two or three. |
The front desk is part of the account. A paid call that rings out or lands in voicemail during clinic hours is the most expensive click a practice buys, and it never shows up as a problem inside Google Ads. Eloari is a poor fit for any business that cannot answer inbound leads within the hour, and medical practices are no exception.
05 — Insurance vs cash-pay
Should an insurance practice advertise like a cash-pay clinic?
No. An insurance-driven practice buys cheap, high-volume clicks and wins by filtering for the plans it accepts; a cash-pay clinic buys expensive clicks and wins by turning a consultation into a program. They need different keywords, different landing pages and a different definition of a conversion.
| Question | Insurance-driven care | Cash-pay services |
|---|---|---|
| Typical click (US, Oct 2026) | About $1.50 – $10 at the top of the page | About $5 – $39 at the top of the page |
| Biggest waste | Patients on plans you don't take | Price shoppers and no-show consults |
| Conversion to count | New patient booked with an accepted plan | Consult attended, then program started |
| Landing page must show | Plans accepted, new-patient availability, locations | Price range or financing, provider credentials, what the visit includes |
| Channel to start with | Google Search | Google Search, then Meta once booked-visit data exists |
If the budget only supports one channel, start with Google: it captures people already asking for the service, and in healthcare it is also the channel least damaged by data restrictions. Meta creates demand rather than capturing it, and works best for practices with an elective service and enough booking history to judge it outside the platform. A full comparison of the two channels is on the main Eloari page.
06 — Who runs it
Jonatã Ariel Silveira
President, Eloari Management Group · Meta Business Partner
Practice accounts are run by the founder, not passed to a junior after the sales call. Eloari currently manages more than $100,000 per week in advertising spend across client accounts, and works in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
07 — Pricing
How much does healthcare PPC management cost?
Eloari charges a flat monthly fee from $900, billed month to month with no setup fee, and the fee never changes with ad spend. Most US agencies charge $2,500 to $10,000 just to build an account; percentage-of-spend agencies usually take 10–20% of the media budget, most often 15%.
| Tier | Monthly fee | Suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $900/mo | Ad spend under $5,000/mo |
| Growth | $1,500/mo | Ad spend $5,000–$20,000/mo |
| Full | $2,500/mo | Ad spend $20,000+/mo |
Ad spend is paid by the practice directly to Google and Meta, with no markup. A sensible minimum for paid search in the US is roughly $2,000 to $3,000 a month, enough to produce reliable data. The best fit is an established practice spending $2,000 or more a month where one new patient is worth several hundred dollars or more.
08 — Related
Where else does Eloari work with medical practices?
Eloari serves practices nationwide, remotely, and its Central Florida pages cover the local healthcare market in detail:
Choosing an agency? Read how to choose a marketing agency in Florida: what agencies charge, the contract terms that predict results and six warning signs.
09 — Questions
Healthcare PPC questions
Is Google Ads HIPAA compliant?
Google Ads is not a place for protected health information, and Google's advertising policy forbids passing personally identifiable information through its tags. A practice can still advertise safely by keeping ad tags off authenticated pages and sending back only a click ID, a status and a value for each booking. What your practice may collect is a question for your privacy counsel.
Can a medical practice use remarketing on Google?
Not for promoting health services. Google classifies health as a sensitive interest category, so advertiser-built audiences, remarketing lists and Customer Match are not allowed for those ads. Google's own predefined audiences are still available, and search intent does most of the work.
Can I put the Meta Pixel on my medical website?
Not on the patient portal, intake forms or any page behind a login, which HHS still treats as covered by HIPAA. Public pages are lower risk after the June 2024 AHA v. Becerra ruling, but class actions over pixels continue, and Meta may restrict your events anyway. Many practices now measure Meta results from their own booking data instead.
How much does Google Ads cost for a medical practice?
It depends on the service. In the US, top-of-page bids run about $1.58 to $10 for searches like "urgent care near me" or "primary care doctor near me," and about $10 to $39 for cash-pay searches like "weight loss clinic near me" (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026). A sensible starting budget for paid search is roughly $2,000 to $3,000 a month.
Does a telehealth practice need certification to run Google Ads?
Yes, in the US. Telemedicine providers and online pharmacies need LegitScript or NABP accreditation plus Google certification, and addiction treatment services need LegitScript certification. Campaigns for those services will not serve until the certification is approved.
How long until a medical practice sees results from PPC?
Campaigns usually launch around day 14, after tracking is verified. The first real optimization decisions come between day 21 and day 30, and meaningful improvement in cost per new patient usually shows in month two or three.
Does Eloari take a percentage of ad spend or lock practices into a contract?
No. The fee is flat, from $900 a month, and does not change with your budget. Engagements are month to month with thirty days' notice, and the practice keeps every ad account, pixel and conversion history if it leaves.
10 — Next step
Start with the review.
Send access to your Google or Meta account, or just tell us which services your practice wants to fill. We will tell you what we would change, starting with tracking, whether or not you hire us.