Healthcare Marketing Glossary: 50 Essential Growth Terms
Healthcare growth teams operate at the intersection of marketing, clinical operations, reimbursement, privacy, regulation, analytics, and finance.
That creates a language problem. The same word can mean one thing to a media buyer, another to a CFO, and something much more specific to a compliance team.
This glossary gives CEOs, marketers, operators, and investors a practical shared vocabulary. Regulatory definitions are simplified for marketing use and should not replace legal or compliance advice.
Growth and Acquisition Terms
1. CAC (Customer or Patient Acquisition Cost)
The amount spent to acquire a new customer or patient. In healthcare, define the conversion event carefully. Cost per lead, cost per booked appointment, and cost per completed patient are not the same metric.
2. Qualified-Patient CAC
Acquisition cost measured after eligibility or qualification rather than at the raw lead stage.
3. Completed-Care CAC
Acquisition cost divided by patients who actually complete the care event being measured. This is often more useful than cost per booking.
4. CPL (Cost Per Lead)
Marketing spend divided by leads generated. CPL can look excellent while downstream economics are poor.
5. CPA (Cost Per Acquisition or Action)
A flexible performance metric whose meaning depends on the action being measured. Always define the action.
6. Conversion Rate
The percentage of people who move from one defined stage to another, such as visitor to lead, lead to booking, or booking to completed visit.
7. Funnel
The sequence of steps between initial demand and the desired commercial or care action.
8. Patient Acquisition
The complete system used to create, qualify, convert, and onboard new patients, not simply paid advertising.
See Telehealth Patient Acquisition.
9. Channel Mix
The combination of sources producing demand, such as organic search, paid search, paid social, referrals, partnerships, employers, payers, or affiliates.
10. Channel Concentration
The degree to which growth depends on one acquisition source. High concentration can create operating risk even when the channel performs well.
Economics and Finance Terms
11. LTV (Lifetime Value)
The economic value generated by a customer or patient relationship over time. For operating decisions, contribution-margin LTV is usually more useful than gross revenue alone.
12. Contribution Margin
Collected revenue minus variable costs required to deliver the service or product.
13. CAC Payback
The time required for contribution margin to recover acquisition cost.
14. AR (Accounts Receivable)
Money owed to the organization but not yet collected.
15. Days in AR
A revenue-cycle measure describing how long receivables remain outstanding.
16. Denial Rate
The percentage of payer claims denied. Definitions vary, so the denominator and claim stage should be clear.
17. Revenue Mix
The distribution of revenue across cash pay, insurance, memberships, employer contracts, payer contracts, or other sources.
18. Unit Economics
The revenue, variable cost, acquisition cost, retention, and payback economics associated with one customer, patient, service line, or contract.
See Telehealth Pricing Models & Unit Economics.
Retention and Patient Experience Terms
19. Retention
The continuation of an appropriate customer, patient, member, or contract relationship over a defined period.
20. Churn
The percentage of customers, members, or contracts that stop during a defined period. Some healthcare churn represents successful completion of care rather than a failure.
21. Cohort
A group analyzed together because members share a common starting point or attribute, such as acquisition month, channel, service line, or plan.
22. Repeat-Care Rate
The percentage of patients who return for another clinically appropriate care event.
23. Patient Journey
The sequence of experiences a patient has from discovery through qualification, scheduling, care, payment, follow-up, and retention.
24. No-Show Rate
The percentage of scheduled appointments not completed because the patient does not attend.
25. Referral Rate
The share of patients or customers who generate new demand through referrals, depending on how the organization defines and tracks referral behavior.
See Telehealth Retention Strategies.
Analytics and Measurement Terms
26. Attribution
The method used to assign credit for a conversion to marketing interactions or channels.
27. First-Touch Attribution
Credits the first tracked marketing interaction.
28. Last-Touch Attribution
Credits the final tracked interaction before the conversion.
29. Incrementality
The additional outcome caused by an intervention compared with what likely would have happened without it.
30. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
Revenue attributed to advertising divided by advertising spend. ROAS does not account for all operating costs.
31. MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio)
A blended ratio comparing total revenue with total marketing spend. Definitions vary by company.
32. CTR (Click-Through Rate)
Clicks divided by impressions for an ad, listing, email, or other measurable surface.
33. CVR (Conversion Rate)
Conversions divided by the relevant traffic or opportunity denominator.
HIPAA and Privacy Terms
34. HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and related federal rules governing certain health information and regulated entities. HIPAA does not automatically apply to every health or wellness company in the same way.
35. Covered Entity
A health plan, health care clearinghouse, or certain health care providers that meet the HIPAA definition.
36. Business Associate
A person or organization that performs certain functions or activities for a covered entity involving protected health information, subject to the HIPAA rules and applicable agreements.
37. PHI (Protected Health Information)
Individually identifiable health information protected under HIPAA when maintained or transmitted by a covered entity or business associate in circumstances covered by the rule.
38. BAA (Business Associate Agreement)
A contract required in certain HIPAA business-associate relationships that addresses permitted uses, safeguards, reporting, and other obligations.
39. Tracking Technology
Code or scripts that collect information about how users interact with websites or apps. HHS OCR says regulated entities must evaluate HIPAA obligations when tracking technologies collect or disclose PHI. The analysis is fact-specific, and portions of prior OCR guidance concerning some unauthenticated webpages were vacated by a federal court in 2024.
See HHS OCR Tracking Technology Guidance.
FDA and Medical Device Terms
40. FDA Registration
Establishment registration or device listing with FDA. FDA explicitly states that registration and listing do not mean a device is approved, cleared, or authorized.
41. 510(k) Clearance
A premarket pathway in which a sponsor demonstrates substantial equivalence to a legally marketed predicate device when a 510(k) is required.
42. PMA (Premarket Approval)
A more stringent FDA premarket pathway for certain devices, based on sufficient valid scientific evidence supporting reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness for the intended use.
43. De Novo
An FDA pathway for classifying certain novel low-to-moderate-risk devices for which there is no suitable legally marketed predicate.
44. Intended Use
The general purpose of a device or product as reflected in applicable regulatory materials and circumstances.
45. Indications for Use
The disease, condition, population, or circumstances for which a device is intended to diagnose, treat, prevent, cure, mitigate, or otherwise be used, as applicable to its regulatory pathway.
See FDA Medical Device Marketing Rules.
FTC and Advertising Terms
46. Substantiation
The evidence an advertiser has to support an objective advertising claim. The FTC expects advertisers to possess appropriate substantiation before disseminating the claim.
47. Net Impression
The overall message consumers are likely to take away from an advertisement, including express and implied claims created by words, images, context, testimonials, and disclosures.
48. Material Connection
A relationship between an advertiser and an endorser that could affect the weight or credibility consumers give the endorsement and may require clear disclosure.
49. Health Claim
An express or implied claim about a health-related benefit, outcome, performance, risk, condition, or other objective health matter.
50. Claims Matrix
An internal operating document mapping proposed marketing claims to evidence, qualifications, approved language, channels, owners, and review dates.
See FTC Health Claim Rules for Healthcare Marketing.
How to Use This Glossary
The point is not memorizing acronyms. It is getting marketing, finance, compliance, clinical, product, and executive teams to use the same definitions.
When a dashboard says CAC, define which acquisition event it means. When a deck says HIPAA compliant, define which entity, workflow, data, and vendor relationship is being evaluated. When marketing says FDA registered, make sure nobody hears FDA approved.
Clear language creates clearer decisions.
