How Indiana Sinus Centers reactivated 152 dormant surgical leads with Blue

This is a 3-part series on reactivating patients for Indiana Sinus Centers. A simple, repetitive workflow AI ran easily.

We had accumulated 152 surgical candidates who never scheduled because they never sent us their insurance info. ISC likes to gather insurance info upfront as part of the pre qualification process. These were people who started a consult, checked all the boxes for needing a nasal and sinus procedure, were asked to upload insurance info, but never did so and therefore never scheduled. The practice had effectively written them off. Blue pulled the full list and sent one follow-up text. Twenty replied. Four scheduled at no new ad spend and almost no staff time.

The question worth asking: how many surgical candidates are sitting in your system right now who never scheduled?

We think this is a problem every practice has

In our conversations with practices it’s common to hear that some level of surgical candidates slip away before the schedule. Someone calls or fills out a form about sinus surgery, the front desk never gets their insurance information, or they stall out at a certain step, and the thread goes quiet.

The patient never says no. They just stop replying or don’t submit the required info, and the practice moves on to the next task.

Why most practices never work this list

It’s repetitive and hard to track down the necessary info. These leads are also scattered across voicemails, web forms, the EHR, etc. Typically there’s no single place that says ‘this person was a surgical candidate who never scheduled. They stalled out at this step.’

The segment matters. A key reason this worked is because we knew what step the patient was stuck at and what they needed to complete next. Whether the person is a surgical candidate, whether they booked, whether insurance is on file, etc.

What we did

We sent one text message. No discount, no campaign, just a direct question from a real person:

Hi [First Name], this is Andrew at Indiana Sinus Centers following up on the consult you started. We never got your insurance info, so I wanted to see where things stand. Did you get seen elsewhere, or do you still want to come in? Just reply and let us know.

The results so far

Twenty of the 152 re-engaged after that first message. Four are now moving toward surgery.

The replies that weren't surgeries still counted. Most of the other responders told us they had been seen elsewhere or weren't surgical candidates after all. That clears them off the list and leaves a smaller group genuinely worth another outreach attempt.

What's next

Today we send a second message to everyone who hasn't responded. Based on the first pass, we expect a few more replies, a few more cleared records, and probably another surgical case or two. We'll publish those numbers here once they're in.

If you run a practice

You probably have your own version of this list. The segment is already in your phone logs and form submissions; you just can't see them as a group yet. That segmenting, outreach, and data analysis is something Blue can give you. We kept working this list for ISC — read here to learn about how we continued the campaign and how the series ended.