DDx — FERTILITY NETWORKS
Fertility: the five ways this presents
Each presentation below lists what could be causing it, ranked, with the finding that tells the causes apart and what resolution actually looks like. 20 causes, 20 tests, each cited to a primary source for this specialty rather than borrowed from another one.
Nothing on these pages describes a client or an engagement.
PRESENTATIONS
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Patient acquisition cost is climbing
Cost per consult is rising and nobody can produce a cost per cycle start. A consult is not revenue in this business; a started cycle is. Every diagnosis below turns on which of the two the group is actually measuring.
4 CAUSES · 4 TESTS
WORK IT THROUGH → -
New patient volume is short of plan
Inquiry and consult volume are healthy and cycle starts are short of plan. In fertility and IVF marketing the volume presentation is almost always a conversion presentation wearing different clothes, because the distance between a first consultation and a star…
4 CAUSES · 4 TESTS
WORK IT THROUGH → -
Growth has plateaued
Cycle starts have held for three quarters while spend has risen. In a network assembled from established clinics the plateau is usually a measurement and capacity problem before it is a demand problem — nobody can see which clinic is flat, or why, in time to d…
4 CAUSES · 4 TESTS
WORK IT THROUGH → -
Performance varies by location
The network was assembled from established clinics and most of them kept what made them valuable — their name, their physicians' reputations, their local standing and their own website. That was usually the right call. It also means the platform now runs a por…
4 CAUSES · 4 TESTS
WORK IT THROUGH → -
Preparing for sale
A process is in view and the pack is built on consults. A buyer prices cycles, capacity and the durability of the network's local brands — and in a portfolio assembled from legacy clinics, the first question is whether anything can be read across them at all.
4 CAUSES · 4 TESTS
WORK IT THROUGH →
WHICH ONE
How to tell which one you have
These five overlap, and two or three usually apply at once. The order to read them in is set by which number actually moved. If cost per new patient moved, start there. If demand held and bookings did not, start with the volume page. If nothing moved at all, start with the plateau page — and if the group total looks acceptable while one site keeps coming up in conversation, read the variance page first, because a pooled number is structurally incapable of showing you what you are looking for.
Every cause on every page above carries a measurement you can run in your own systems, with the finding that confirms it and the finding that rules it out. Run two or three before you brief anybody. If the tests tell you this is not a marketing problem, that is the correct answer and it cost you nothing.
RESOLUTION
What resolves each, and what resolved looks like
Each presentation resolves to a different part of the work, and the pages say which: reporting and attribution where the finding is a measurement error, conversion and desk work where the loss is between the inquiry and the admission, acquisition where the demand genuinely is not there, and pre-sale work where the question is whether growth can be re-run by somebody else.
Each also carries what resolved looks like as a number — the measure, the published median, the top decile where an honest one exists, and a target range — with the source in the row. Where no credible distribution is published, the page says so instead of borrowing one from an adjacent specialty. That absence is itself a finding: it means your own trailing history is the only benchmark worth measuring against.
WHERE YOU STAND
Reference ranges for fertility networks
See also where you stand and what decides the outcome before any of this is treated.
A differential narrows the list. It does not close it — that is what the examination is for.
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