The click that starts the journey converts into a doctor's appointment, not a booking. Somewhere between 17 and 22 days later the client comes back, usually by typing your name into Google, and your brand campaign takes the credit.
The University of Melbourne's Better Access evaluation measured two things that together explain most of what looks broken in a psychology account. The median wait from obtaining a mental health treatment plan to the first treatment session was 17 days for the highest income quintile and 22 days for the lowest. And only 56.5 per cent of people in the lowest quintile proceeded from a plan to treatment at all, against 69.3 per cent in the highest.
So a top of funnel click has a roughly one in three chance of never producing a client, through no fault of the advertising, and where it does succeed the booking lands two to three weeks later and usually in a different reporting month than the spend.
Worse for attribution, the return visit is very often direct or branded, because by then the person knows your name. Last click hands the credit to your brand campaign and the prospecting campaign that actually caused it looks unprofitable and gets cut. That is the single most common way a working psychology account gets dismantled.
A 30 day window on a funnel with a 17 to 22 day median middle step will systematically under-report. This is the cheapest fix available and most accounts have never had it changed from the default.
Top of funnel traffic cannot book, because they need a plan first. Give them something they can do: a call, an enquiry, or a page explaining how to ask a GP for a mental health treatment plan. That is a real conversion and it is the one the bidding can learn from.
In this vertical the branded search is largely a consequence of the prospecting campaign, delayed by three weeks. Reporting them together makes prospecting look bad and brand look brilliant, which leads to exactly the wrong budget decision.
This is what the practice actually cares about. Halaxy publishes webhooks covering appointment creation and updates, Cliniko and Nookal can be polled, and where none of that is available, matching on hashed contact details works from any system that can export a client list.
Attended first sessions by funding type and by clinician, so the practice can see which advertising is filling the hours it wanted filled rather than simply generating enquiries.
| System | Public API | Webhooks | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Halaxy | Documented FHIR REST, OAuth, paid add-on | Yes. Patient, appointment and invoice events | The strongest option for offline conversion import in this set |
| Cliniko | Open, self serve REST | None | Documents that its embedded booking iframe breaks referral tracking |
| Splose | REST, apply via dashboard | None | Ships a booking confirmed data layer event, and documents that its booking pages are single page apps so thank you page tracking will not work |
| Nookal | Open, self serve | None official | Pollable |
| Zanda, formerly Power Diary | Closed beta | None found | Effectively closed for now |
| Jane | Vetted partner programme only | Not mentioned | The vendor has stated it is not launching an open or public API |
One thing worth knowing before you choose: Halaxy automatically lists every verified practitioner in its public directory, so your practice management vendor is also competing with you in search results.
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.
A senior specialist who runs clinic accounts day to day.
Every keyword, headline and account structure built inside real Australian clinic accounts.
Winner, Best Google Ads Campaign, Australia 2025. Google Partner. AFR Fast 100.