In three years, a Pacific Northwest orthopedic practice moved its payer mix from 60% government to roughly 70% commercial, averages about 1000 new patient appointments a month, and consistently hits above 92% physician utilization. These numbers are even more impressive as the practice acquired a physician practice and a physical therapy practice, recruited a new physician, added a new service line, and opened a new location in this same time frame.
The practice set aggressive goals to move the payer-mix and to accelerate ramp-up times for its investments. It did not get there by throwing more budget at marketing. It got there because its CEO treated marketing as a lever for filling physician schedules and gave our team the data to pull it.
We came in at a pivotal moment. Two orthopedic practices that had competed in the same market were joining forces, and a new CEO had been appointed to put the combined group on a growth track. Neither practice had marketed before, so the new organization was starting from scratch: no paid advertising, no consistent social presence and no way to connect patient demand to physician schedules.Â
The combined practice also started with about 60% of its patients on Medicare or Medicaid, while its specialists were trained for high-acuity joint replacement and sports medicine cases. And more growth was already planned: new physicians, a hand surgery service line and a physical therapy acquisition. Each addition needed patient demand before day one, not six months after.
The turning point wasn’t a channel or a campaign. It was a CEO who understood that marketing performance and physician utilization are the same conversation, and who ran the partnership that way.
Weekly: adjust in real time. Every week, the practice tells our team which physicians are under-scheduled. We respond behind the scenes, shifting ad spend toward that physician, building a content piece to raise their profile, or both. Gaps get addressed in days, not quarters.
Monthly: separate signal from noise. At the end of every month, we review utilization by physician and by service line. When a number dips, we diagnose why. Was it ad performance, content, the website? Or was the physician on PTO for two weeks? That distinction keeps budget from being moved in response to problems marketing didn’t cause.
This is what turns marketing from a cost center into an operational lever: the practice shares the data, and every tactic below is aimed at a real gap.
The strategy came down to one principle: the right patients, with the right providers, at the right time.
Practice data showed the strongest fit was adults roughly 35 to 55: active “weekend warriors” who need a sports medicine physician, and people who should know the practice well before they ever need a joint replacement. Because that range sits below Medicare age, targeting it naturally grew commercially insured volume. Our team layered in service line, persona demographics, and every channel below is built around that profile.
Boosted posts tested audiences and amplified the best organic content. Clicks nearly quadrupled year over year while cost per click was cut in half.
Our team works within HIPAA every day and advises clients on compliance as part of the strategy, not as an afterthought. For this practice, that meant reviewing every channel and tracking tool for risk and recommending against display advertising entirely because of the exposure that tracking technology creates on healthcare websites. The practice grew without putting patient privacy on the line.
Website strategy focused on making it easy for a prospective patient to find the right physician and book, and on ranking for the conditions and procedures the practice wanted to grow. Google Business Profiles were optimized for every location and every physician. In 2025:Â
101 pieces of content were published between Q4 2024 and the end of 2025, covering conditions, symptoms and procedures. Each piece lives on the blog and in permanent website pages and is repurposed across social. The same keyword research drives paid and organic, so the two channels reinforce each other. One blog, “5 Signs You’ve Torn Your Rotator Cuff,” grew 7,900% in visits year over year.
In tandem with Social Climb, our team builds patient reviews and testimonials into social, the website and campaigns as ongoing social proof. In just one year with SocialClimb, the number of annual reviews for the practice increased by 47%.
Physician utilization is about filling individual schedules.
When the weekly call flags an under-scheduled physician, our team has two levers ready: physician-specific ads, and content built around that physician’s expertise. Each specialist has an optimized bio, headshots, video and their own Google Business Profile, so patients searching for a specific surgeon find them.
When the practice added a hand surgeon in year two, we built content and campaigns around hand, wrist and elbow conditions. Organic traffic to that service line grew 170% in 2025.
The practice invested in a partnership with a local TV news station to produce physician interview segments. We turned each segment into social clips, a blog post and website content, so one investment fed every channel. Those clips earned the highest click-through rate of any content on Facebook.
We issued press releases every other month through mid-2025 that promoted every milestone: new physicians, new service lines, expansions and achievements like a surgeon’s 2,000th outpatient joint replacement.
Three posts a week mix patient education, testimonials and physician spotlights, timed to when each platform’s audience engages most. LinkedIn became a channel for physician thought leadership.
Every sponsorship must reach a defined audience in a defined place. We audited the practice’s community spend and refocused it on partnerships that reach the target patient and activate the benefits the practice was already paying for.
The practice’s sponsorship of the city’s marathon became a full campaign. Root3 built a 26-part blog series for runners, one for each mile. The blogs focused on training, injury prevention, and recovery, activating across social and the website. A single sponsorship produced months of content, search rankings for runner-specific searches like “back of knee pain runner,” and a reason for the region’s most active adults to know the practice before they get hurt.
The measures that matter here are the ones the CEO reviews every month: utilization, payer mix, appointments and revenue.Â
Mergers, new leadership, new physicians and new service lines all create the same need: patient demand, fast. This practice started with no marketing at all and built a system that now keeps physician schedules 92% full.Â
The tactics alone didn’t get it there. Any practice can run ads, publish content and sponsor a youth soccer league. The difference was a CEO who treated marketing as part of operations, sharing which schedules had room, which service lines were behind and what growth was coming. Â
Planning for growth? The time to bring marketing in is before the first new physician starts. Root3 works with orthopedic leadership teams to turn operational data into patient volume.
achieve?
achieve?