Proof
We called 346 UK clinics to find out how reachable they are
Then we called back the ones that did not answer. The results are below in full, including the method and its limits. It is our own data, gathered by phoning clinics the way a patient would, not an industry statistic borrowed from somewhere else.
The outreach study · 2026
Most clinics could not be reached, and calling back barely helped
Of 346 clinics with a logged outcome, 172 rang out with no answer at all. Another 24 reached a voicemail, an automated menu, or an engaged tone. We called 76 of them back. Three were reached. Seventy-three were not.
A single missed call is an anecdote. A call that is still missed on the second attempt is a process, and a process is a thing you can change.
- 172Rang out. Nobody answered at all
- 24Voicemail, an automated menu, or engaged
- 150Reached a human being
One square per clinic. 346 UK private clinics with a logged call outcome, contacted during 2026.
“But we screen sales calls, we always answer patients”
A fair challenge, and worth answering directly: these were our calls, not patient calls. But nobody screened them. 172 simply rang out, and a phone that rings out cannot tell who is on the other end. If it rang out for us at two on a Tuesday afternoon, it rang out for whoever called next. The finding is not that clinics ignore patients, it is that in most clinics there is nobody free to answer, and the phone does not discriminate.
Method and limitations
644 UK private clinics were contacted as part of an outbound campaign during 2026; 346 have a logged call outcome and form the sample here. Selection among the 644 was not randomised.
The list was derived from CQC registration data and targeted at a particular service line, so it is not a representative sample of UK private clinics generally. A visible share of clinics reached told us they do not offer the service in question.
Outcomes were recorded as free text by the callers and normalised for analysis, around twenty spelling variants of “no answer” were merged into one category. Call timestamps were not recorded, so time-of-day and day-of-week cannot be analysed. All calls were made during business hours.
Figures are reported in aggregate only. No clinic is named and no individual is identified.
Client work · anonymised
Three weeks of paid search at a UK assessment clinic
A private ADHD and autism assessment service, running a search campaign we built and manage. The figures below are its first three weeks, from the Google Ads export for July 2026.
The campaign spent £1,037.46 and produced 17 tracked enquiries at £61.03 each. It began part-way through the month, so that is roughly three weeks of spend rather than four.
Google classes the campaign as limited by budget, which is worth reading plainly: there is demand it is not being allowed to serve. That is a good problem, and an unusual one to be able to prove.
The number we find most interesting is not the 17. It is the 757. That is how many people clicked the ad, arrived, and did not make contact. Paid search bought the visit; what happens next decides whether it was worth buying. That is the whole argument of this site, and here it is in a live account.
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See what the same check finds at your clinic
We mystery-shop your clinic the way a patient would, by search, phone and web form, then show you the patients you could be winning. Scored on three things: are you found, is the enquiry answered, does anyone chase it.