Measuring Consultation Conversions: The Power of Procedure-Specific Conversion Rates

By Amy Anderson, MBA

As published in Aesthetic Society News Winter/Spring 2024

Successful plastic surgery practices track the number of consultations that result in scheduled surgeries. This is known as the conversion rate. A single overall conversion rate can be moderately helpful in answering the question How effective are we at turning leads into paying patients? However, you can learn a great deal more about what is really happening in your practice by tracking the conversion rate by procedure. 

Consider the table below, showing the conversion rates for the top 10 surgeries offered by a plastic surgeon in Florida. The overall conversion rate hovers around 55% yet a deeper dive into the details reveals striking variations between the procedures. 

The practice was doing a great job of converting consultations for mastopexy, explantation, and breast reduction surgeries. However, abdominoplasty and gynecomastia consultations were converting at a substantially lower rate. Yikes! This warranted further analysis. 

We met with the Patient Care Coordinator (PCC) to review the patients who came in for an abdominoplasty consultation who did not book surgery. In reviewing each patient’s details, we discovered that several women who came in for a consultation needed to first lose weight before undergoing surgery to meet the BMI criteria for the surgery center. The problem was not that the consultation wasn’t effective, but rather that several patients were not qualified candidates for surgery. 

We used that feedback to implement more screening questions at the time of booking the consultation, which will result in more qualified consultations with patients who are ready to book surgery. 

Turning our attention to gynecomastia consultations, the PCC shared that many of these male patients were unprepared to have any downtime following surgery and were hesitant to proceed due to the post-op restrictions on physical activity. The PCC has since shifted her language to talk about which activities can be done after surgery and at what intervals. She now discusses this information over the phone, prior to the consultation, to ensure that the patient is informed and prepared to move forward with surgery after the consultation. 

Tracking procedure-specific conversion rates helps you to identify which procedures are underperforming. Armed with that data, you can then adjust your strategies accordingly. Let’s face it, in a busy practice you can’t afford to waste time or resources. Good data allows you to make informed decisions about where to focus your energy.