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Dermatology · conversion tracking

The click leads to a GP appointment, not to your booking page.

A patient searching for a dermatologist who wants a Medicare rebate has to visit a GP first. Days or weeks later a referral arrives from a practice you never advertised to. That is not an attribution failure, it is how the system works, and the tracking has to be designed around it.

The structural gap

A referral business has an invisible middle step.

For specialist dermatology the sequence runs: search, then a GP appointment, then a referral written and sent, then your practice books the patient, then they attend. The Google attributable window covers the first step and nothing else. Everything between the click and the referral happens inside a different practice's systems.

So the honest architecture has two tiers. A micro conversion you can actually fire on your own site, which is an enquiry, a call, or a referral information download, and which the bidding can use. And an offline import of attended appointments, which is the truth and which is reported rather than bid on.

Anyone reporting cost per booking on a specialist dermatology account inside a 30 day window is measuring the wrong thing, and usually reporting a number far worse than reality because most of the conversions have not arrived yet.

What we build

Making a referral business measurable.

  1. 01

    Give the referral seeker something to convert on

    A booking-only call to action fails most qualified specialist dermatology traffic, because the reader cannot book yet. A referral request page, a what to ask your GP explainer, or a form that emails them a referral request to take in, all give the visitor an action that matches where they actually are.

  2. 02

    Capture the identifier at that moment

    The click identifier goes into your own lead store when the enquiry or download happens, because that is the last point at which you control the page.

  3. 03

    Export attended appointments from the practice system

    Bp Premier can export the appointment book to CSV, and critically the export carries a Booked by column that lets you filter to online bookings specifically. That is the closest thing to a native attribution field in the Australian primary care stack.

  4. 04

    Match on hashed contact details, not on the click

    By the time the patient attends, the original click identifier is usually long gone or was never captured, because the referral came through a channel you did not control. Enhanced conversions matching on hashed email is the realistic route.

  5. 05

    Report the lag honestly

    Show the distribution, not just the average. A specialist dermatology account with a median 5 week click to attendance gap will look broken at 30 days and healthy at 90, and the client needs to see that before month one rather than after.

What the systems allow

Australian dermatology and skin cancer software.

SystemUsed byOnline bookingData out
Bp PremierGP-led skin cancer clinicsBest Health BookingAppointment CSV export including a Booked by column. API via Halo Connect, partner gated
Genie and GentuSpecialist dermatologists, majority shareNone native. Partner integrations onlyFHIR and OAuth partner API, closed beta, $500 per month or 20 per cent of revenue
ZedmedGP and specialistYesHalo Connect, doubly gated. The only system listing a dermatology imaging integration
HotDocBooking layer over the aboveYes, this is the productNo public developer API found
AutomedGP booking layer writing into Bp and MedicalDirectorYesThe only vendor documenting UTM source tracking and analytics reporting

Since 31 December 2025 all third party integrators to Bp Premier have been required to use Halo Connect and be approved as a Bp Partner, which changes the timeline on any integration project.

Ask the clinic whether it actually wants more patients
This sounds facetious and it is the single most important qualifying question in specialist dermatology. There are 661 dermatologists in Australia and waiting lists are measured in months. A practice with a full referral book gets negative marginal value from more advertising spend: it buys enquiries it cannot service, irritates the people who make them, and occupies staff answering calls. In that situation the useful work is mix control, filling cancellations and attracting the specific case types with capacity, not lead generation. No cosmetic clinic ever has to answer this question.
Straight answers

Questions clinic owners actually ask

How do you track conversions when the patient has to see a GP first?
By changing what you count. The on-site action a referral seeking visitor can actually take is an enquiry, a phone call or a referral information request, and that is what the bidding should optimise towards. The attended appointment is then imported later, matched on hashed contact details rather than the click identifier, because the identifier rarely survives a journey that goes through a GP practice and a referral. Reporting both, with the lag distribution visible, is the only version that does not mislead somebody.
Can Bp Premier export data for Google Ads conversion imports?
Yes, and better than most people realise. Bp Premier can export the appointment book to CSV, and the export includes a Booked by column that can be filtered to isolate bookings made through its online booking product. Combined with attendance status that gives you an attended online booking list you can match against your lead store. There is also an API route, though since 31 December 2025 all third party integrators have been required to go through Halo Connect and be approved as a Bp Partner, which lengthens the timeline considerably.
Why does my dermatology account look worse than it is?
Almost always the reporting window. If your practice takes referred patients, there is a GP visit, a referral and a booking queue between the click and the appointment, and that regularly runs to weeks. A 30 day report captures the spend and only part of the return. We report on a 90 day window for referral driven dermatology and show the click to attendance lag distribution explicitly, because the alternative is a client making a budget decision on a number that is structurally incomplete.
Should a dermatology practice use Customer Match audiences?
It cannot. Google classifies Health among its sensitive interest categories, and advertisers promoting in those categories cannot use advertiser-curated audiences, which rules out Customer Match and anything built from it. This catches out practices who assume they can retarget their patient list or build lookalikes from it. Measurement uploads are a separate matter and remain available, so reporting an attended appointment back to Google is fine. Asking Google to find more people like that patient is not.
Related

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A campaign partnership built for clinics

Ads that earn their place in your P&L.

A senior team that lives inside your account. Conversion infrastructure wired in before any ad goes live. Reporting that ties spend to booked appointments, not impressions.

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A senior specialist who runs clinic accounts day to day.

Clinic-only specialists

Every keyword, headline and account structure built inside real Australian clinic accounts.

Award-winning team

Winner, Best Google Ads Campaign, Australia 2025. Google Partner. AFR Fast 100.

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