When a clinic near you closes, its patients start searching for who to see next, and for a short while some of them are looking for exactly what you offer. The right response is not a campaign. It is a month of making sure those patients can find you, reach a person and book, and no more than that. Check your capacity first, because marketing cannot create appointment slots you do not have.
Considering ongoing marketing support? I run orthopedic marketing agency services for practices like yours. I can discuss your priorities and possible scope. Fees, responsibilities, account access and handover terms are defined in a written proposal. Request a marketing review
Here is a real local example. In December 2025 a hospital system gave its Ashland orthopedic staff 90 days’ notice that it would close its Ashland orthopedic office by 4 March 2026, according to Ashland.news. The report says the system was supporting patients with referrals to new providers in the community. I am using it only to show what patients face. I make no judgment about the system, and I name no practice that gained or lost anything.
Week 1: check capacity before you check anything else
Ask your scheduler one question: how many new-patient slots can we honestly fill in the next 30 days, and how soon is the first available visit? If the answer is “none for six weeks”, stop here and read the last section. A patient who finds you and cannot be seen is worse for your reputation than a patient who never found you.
Then confirm the basics on every public page: the right address, the right phone, the right hours and the insurance plans you accept. My notes on the Google Business Profile list the items I check.
Week 2: make the answer easy to find
Add one plain page for patients who need a new orthopedic practice. Say which conditions you treat, which surgeons see them, which plans you accept, how to ask for records from a previous office, and how to book. Write it for a person who is worried, not for a search engine.
Use your own name only. Do not use the closed clinic’s name in an ad or a page title. That can mislead patients and invite a complaint, and it looks like you are trading on someone else’s trouble. Never contact patients from a list you do not own.
Week 3: protect the phone
New patients who are changing practices call, and they call at the same hours as everyone else. In a March 2026 poll of 294 practice leaders, MGMA found that eligibility and prior authorization was the most time-consuming phone task for 45%, ahead of scheduling at 31%. If your phones are already full of insurance work, a new-patient call can wait in a queue. Give new patients a callback form and a promise your front desk can keep, and count missed calls for two weeks. When I reviewed 24 orthopedic practice websites at phone width this month, 5 showed a phone number as plain text on the homepage with no tap-to-call link in the page code. Some phones make plain numbers tappable on their own, so that is a risk and not a measured loss. My notes on call handling go into detail.
⚡ 2-minute scorecard · instant result
Is your orthopedic practice website turning searches into booked consults?
Answer 5 quick questions. Get your score + the top fixes, free.
1. Can a new patient request an appointment from a phone in under a minute?
2. Is every phone number on your site a tap-to-call link?
3. Do your procedure pages name the surgeons who perform them and show patient reviews?
4. Does each office have its own page with hours, phone and the surgeons who work there?
5. Do you track new-patient requests from the first click to a kept consult?
Week 4: tell the people who refer to you
Send a short, factual note to the primary care offices and therapy clinics that already refer to you. It should say that you have capacity, which problems you treat, the first available visit and who to call. Do not criticize anyone, and do not claim anything you cannot prove. A referring office wants a clear answer and a person to contact.
Then measure. Record new-patient calls, booked first visits and the first available date, and compare them with the month before. If the numbers did not move, the constraint is probably somewhere else.
When you should not do this
Skip the whole plan if you have no new-patient capacity, if a recruitment or merger is about to change who you are, or if your records and listings are still wrong. Fix those first. In a survey of 992 patients, rater8, a review-software vendor, found that 75% would not book a provider rated below 4.0 stars. A vendor has a reason to stress reviews, so I read it as a direction, but it is a reminder that a patient who finds you will also read what others say.
Extra visitors only help if the phone gets answered, so fix the basics before you spend. If you would like a second opinion on where your practice stands, the scorecard on this page takes about two minutes and you see your score straight away. You can also read my Southern Oregon overview or book a free 30-minute call.
I am Mandeep Singh, founder of Sprout Sage Solutions. I work from India, I have spent over ten years in digital marketing and I have built 450 websites.
This is a marketing guide. It is not legal, billing or medical advice.
