unnus Magazine: Featuring Dr. Ryan Rider

In this issue, we're featuring Dr. Rider as a guest. We discuss brand building, intangible assets and how to maintain your practice's core values. Learn more here.

 

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A Patient Acquisition Strategy Built on Trust, Not Noise

Sliman M. Baghouri

Good medicine does not fill a waiting room. It should. But it doesn’t. A practice grows when the right people can find it, trust it, reach it, and receive care without losing confidence along the way. A good doctor can remain invisible for years. Not because the care is poor. Because the practice is difficult to understand from the outside. The website sounds like every other clinic. The physician biography reads like a credential warehouse.

    

STAFF PICKS

Little-known Orthodontic Marketing Ideas 2023 (+Examples)

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Pharma Branding: Create A Market-Leading Company (2026)

By Sliman M. Baghouri

Patient Engagement: A Practical Guide (Free Tool + Planners)

By Sliman M. Baghouri

POPULAR THIS WEEK

A Patient Acquisition Strategy Built on Trust, Not Noise

By Sliman M. Baghouri

Referral Management Has a Last-Mile Problem

By Sliman M. Baghouri

Your Patient Intake Form Is Asking Too Much

By Sliman M. Baghouri

Your Patient Filled Out the Form. Now Where Did Their Data Go?

Sliman M. Baghouri

A patient calls to ask why nobody answered the form they submitted three days ago. You turn to the front desk and ask where website forms go. The answer begins with, “I think…” It is Thursday at 12:40. The morning ran late. There is a half-eaten sandwich beside the keyboard and twenty minutes before the next patient walks in. Your receptionist says online requests usually arrive in the shared inbox.

    

Well written, and read.

Patient Wait Time Is Not Dead Time. It Is a Trust Test

Sliman M. Baghouri

The schedule says 10:00. The wall clock says 10:47. In the space between them, your patient is deciding what your practice thinks their time is worth. Tuesday, 11:36 a.m. The appointment grid on the monitor is beautiful. Fifteen-minute blocks. Clean colors. No alarms. No red warning that says the day has already gone crooked. But room two is still occupied. A new patient is filling out the same medication list she entered online last night.

Why More Reminders Won’t Fix Patient No-Shows

Sliman M. Baghouri

Your reminder report says delivered. The empty appointment slot says something else. One is a communication event. The other is a systems problem waiting to be understood. Most no-show strategies begin with an assumption disguised as a diagnosis: the patient forgot. That assumption is convenient. It turns a complicated access problem into a messaging problem. Send a text. Add another touchpoint. Increase the cadence. Watch the delivery dashboard turn green.

Freshest issues

Where Hospital Wayfinding Quietly Fails

Sliman M. Baghouri

A hospital can have perfectly legible signs and still lose people every fifty feet. The letters are large. The arrows are accurate. The journey between them is broken. A woman steps out of the parking garage with an appointment message open on her phone. It says North Pavilion. The sign above the covered walkway says Ambulatory Center. Inside, the directory calls the same place Building C. Three names.

Your Patient Intake Form Is Asking Too Much

Sliman M. Baghouri

The problem is not that your patient intake form has forty-seven fields. The problem is that nobody can explain why half of them are there, who uses the answers, or why every patient has to answer them now. Nobody designed the whole form. Billing added three questions after a difficult claim. A clinician added seven because one new patient arrived without enough history. Marketing wanted to know where referrals came from.