Marketing a cardiology practice.

How do patients reach a cardiologist?

The need

Chest pain, palpitations, shortness of breath, high blood pressure that will not come down, heart failure and the follow-up after a heart attack or a procedure.

Urgency

Both urgent and planned

Payment

Mostly insurance

Who chooses

The patient and a referring physician both weigh in

Most new patients still come on a referral. A primary care doctor hears a murmur, sees an abnormal EKG or worries about symptoms, and sends the patient to the cardiologist they trust, often the one whose office answers fast and sends a clear letter back. Hospitals, emergency departments and other specialists send the rest.

The patient's own search now matters too. Plenty of people look up a heart doctor near me after a scare, or when their doctor gives them a name and they want to check it. Many are on Medicare or nearing it, and a spouse or adult child is often the one doing the research. They weigh insurance, how soon the first visit is, distance and what reviews say about being listened to.

Some cardiology practices also sell self-pay services, such as heart scans and screening packages that patients book without a referral. Those patients act like any consumer, comparing price and convenience, and they are the only cardiology patients for whom broad advertising can make sense.

Which listing and review sites matter for cardiology?

Cardiology patients check the doctor their primary care physician named before they call, so the profiles have to be complete and accurate even when the referral did the choosing. A booking listing helps mainly with self-referred patients and second opinions.

• Google Business Profile Free

  What a patient sees when they search the practice or the physician by name; list each office and its testing services, such as echo and stress testing.

• Healthgrades Free

  Families comparing heart doctors read training, hospital affiliations and reviews here. Claim every physician's profile.

• WebMD Care Free, with paid options

  Free basic profile; Featured Profile priced on request

  The free profile is worth claiming; its Featured Profile is quoted on request and also appears on Vitals, so weigh it against your referral volume.

• Zocdoc Per new patient

  Fee per new-patient booking; amount not published

  Useful for second-opinion and self-referred consults if the schedule has room; each new-patient booking carries a fee.

How each site charges is as recorded in the listing site directory, read on the site’s own pages; each name opens its full listing.

What do search ads cost a cardiology practice?

LocaliQ publishes no cardiology figure. The healthcare-wide benchmark, $5.64 (benchmark, LocaliQ, 2026) a click with a conversion rate of 8.09% (benchmark, LocaliQ, 2026), comes to about $69.72 (worked out from the benchmark, LocaliQ, 2026) a lead, which is cheap next to what a cardiology patient is worth over years of follow-up.

The catch is fit. Ads for general heart care mostly reach people who will be referred anyway, and the practice pays for a patient it would have seen. Ads earn their keep on self-pay services such as heart scans, and on second-opinion visits for conditions like atrial fibrillation, where the patient is choosing.

Open the calculator on the healthcare benchmark

Which channels fit a cardiology practice?

Referral relationships come first because they bring most of the volume. The map listing and reviews come next because nearly every referred patient checks the name. Search ads come last and only for the services a patient chooses without a referral.

Questions to ask

• How many days does a referred patient wait for a first visit, and does the referring office know?
• Which primary care practices sent the most patients last year, and which stopped?
• Do patients get the same price on the phone that the website shows for a heart scan?
• Who checks that physician profiles list the right hospitals after a change in privileges?

Which rules apply to cardiology marketing?

Because cardiology runs on referrals and Medicare patients, the rules about rewarding referrals matter more than the rules about ads. The first three below apply to every practice.

State medical boards add their own advertising rules, and they vary by state; the state medical board index links each one.

How should a cardiology practice budget for new patients?

Most of a cardiology budget is time spent on referral relationships, which the calculator cannot price. Use it for the paid part: the self-pay services and second opinions you advertise. Enter what a screening visit brings in and whether those patients become ongoing patients.

For referred patients, the value is in years of follow-up, testing and procedures, so even a small rise in referrals outweighs most ad budgets. Track new patients by source each month so the figures you enter are your own.