Canada
Healthcare marketing for private-pay clinics in Canada
Canadian private-pay clinics face the same auction mechanics as US ones and a different privacy regime: PHIPA in Ontario, the Health Information Act in Alberta, PIPEDA across commercial activity, plus provincial advertising rules from the regulating colleges. The measurement design changes; the marketing logic does not.
You work with me, directly, one-on-one. No account managers, no juniors, no handoff.
Who this is for
- Private-pay clinics in Canada: surgical, dental, aesthetic and fertility.
- Clinics operating in more than one province with different rules in each.
- Owners who have been quoted by US agencies unfamiliar with provincial advertising standards.
What usually goes wrong
US privacy advice applied to a Canadian clinic
HIPAA does not govern you. Provincial health-information law and PIPEDA do, and the practical answer differs in the details.
Provincial advertising rules discovered late
Colleges regulate what a clinic may claim and show. It varies by province and by profession.
Reporting in the wrong currency
Budgets in CAD and reporting in USD hides changes that matter.
What I run
- Privacy-safe measurement
- Click-ID-only feeds so no patient information leaves your systems, reviewed against provincial requirements.
- Search and local visibility
- Campaigns by procedure, geo-targeted by presence, with the map pack treated as a channel.
- Multi-province handling
- Separate campaigns and reporting where rules or markets differ, one shared definition of a stage.
- Advertising compliance
- Claims and imagery checked against the relevant college's standards before launch.
- Reporting
- Cost per attended patient in CAD, by procedure and by location.
How it starts
- Week 1 Audit: the account, the tracking and the path from enquiry to patient, with a written 90-day plan.
- Weeks 2 to 4 Capture fixed at every entry point. Campaigns narrowed to the services that justify them.
- Weeks 5 to 8 A verified stage becomes the bidding signal, and form fills drop to secondary.
- Month 3 onward Budget follows cost per patient by service, reviewed monthly with you.
Proof
On my current healthcare programme I inherited an underperforming account and rebuilt it: cost per acquisition came down by about 78% while spend grew.
Talk to the person who will actually do it
The audit is $500 per ad account (billed in USD), comes with a 90-day plan, and is credited toward the first month if you continue with me. Retainers start at $5,000 a month, adjusted to budget and workload. Ad spend is paid by you directly.
Where I am not the right fit. Under roughly $10,000 a month in ad spend a retainer rarely pays for itself. I will say so on the call and suggest the audit plus a fixed project instead.
Common questions
Do Canadian clinics have to follow HIPAA?
No. Provincial health-information law applies, such as PHIPA in Ontario or the Health Information Act in Alberta, alongside PIPEDA for commercial activity.
Does that change the tracking setup?
The engineering answer is the same: keep identifiable health information inside and send the minimum. The review and the documentation differ.
What about college advertising standards?
They govern claims, testimonials and imagery, and they vary by province and profession. Worth checking before creative is produced.
Can you work across provinces?
Yes. Separate campaigns where the markets or rules differ, with one shared set of stage definitions for reporting.
Do you bill in CAD?
I invoice in USD, and report performance in the currency your ad accounts run in.
Who does the work?
I do. Nothing is subcontracted or delegated.