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Your patient decides before they book the flight
Nobody flies to a country to go shopping for a dentist once they land. The clinic is chosen weeks earlier, from a couch in another city, on a screen, in English. If you are not in that research, you were never in the running.
Audit US$400, delivered in 5 days. Run in English, because that is the search that matters here.
Clinic A publishes implant pricing in dollars and Clinic B explains how many days the trip takes.
You are not competing with the clinic down the street
This is what makes dental tourism different from every other local business we measure, and what most clinics get wrong.
A patient in Ohio weighing dental implants is not comparing you against other clinics in Santo Domingo. They are comparing the Dominican Republic against Costa Rica, against Los Algodones in Mexico, against Colombia. And within the country, against the three or four clinics that turned up in the answer they got.
That entire comparison happens in English, months before anyone books anything. By the time they land, the decision was made a long time ago.
Ranking well locally does not carry over
We see clinics that dominate the local search, have hundreds of reviews, and are completely absent from the English query. It is not a contradiction. It is a different question, in a different language, judged against a different set of competitors.
Your reviews in Spanish are real and they are earned, but they do less work than you would expect for a patient reading in English. Not because of the language of the review itself, but because everything around it — your site, your profile description, your service list — is speaking to somebody else.
The questions are not the ones you are used to
A local patient asks how much it costs and whether you take their insurance. An international patient asks a completely different set, and almost no clinic answers them anywhere a machine can read:
- How many days do I need to stay in the country?
- Is it done in one trip or do I have to come back?
- What happens if something goes wrong once I'm home?
- Who do I see for follow-up in my own city?
- What is actually included in the price, and what isn't?
- Is the clinic accredited, and by whom?
These are the questions that decide the booking. A clinic that answers them clearly, in English, on a page a system can read, gets cited. A clinic whose site says “excellence and warmth” does not, no matter how good its dentistry is.
Price silence is fatal here specifically
In most trades, refusing to publish prices is a defensible choice. In dental tourism it isn't, because cost is the entire reason the patient is considering a flight. If they cannot find a number from you, they find one from someone else and that becomes their reference point.
You do not have to publish an exact figure. A range, what it includes, and what makes it move is enough, and it filters out the people who were never going to book anyway.
What the clinic that does show up is doing
Almost always something unglamorous. A page per treatment, in English, that says what it costs, how long the trip takes, and what happens afterwards. Written for a nervous patient, not for a colleague.
It is rarely a question of budget. It is a question of somebody having sat down to write it.
What we look at in a dental tourism clinic
On top of the six questions and four systems in the audit, we look specifically at this:
- The English query. Whether you appear when the question is asked in English, which is where this patient actually decides.
- The international comparison. Which clinics come back instead of you, including ones in other countries.
- The Google profile category. “Dentist” and “dental clinic” are not the same, and the treatment-specific secondaries are almost never loaded.
- Treatments as services. Implants, veneers, full-mouth restoration, crowns. Each one is a separate field on the profile.
- Whether prices exist anywhere. A range, a “from”, a package. Anything readable.
- The trip explained. Days in country, number of visits, what happens between them.
- Aftercare. What you do if there is a problem once the patient is home. This is the question that most often kills a booking.
- Credentials and accreditation. Whether they are stated in a way a machine can read, not just shown as a logo image.
- English reviews. How many, how recent, and whether anyone responds to them.
- Medical tourism directories. What the aggregators say about you, and whether that information is still accurate.
What is an international patient worth to you?
We are not going to invent a number. We don't know your fees or your case mix, and anything we put here would be made up.
But you can run it in a minute, and it is the only calculation that matters before hiring anyone:
- What does one international case bill, on average?
- How many of those patients come back for a second phase of treatment?
- How many bring a spouse, a sibling, or a friend on the next trip?
Compare that against US$400 for the audit. In most clinics doing implant work, a single case covers it several times over. If in yours it doesn't, tell us plainly and we will tell you not to hire it. Not every business is a fit for this and we would rather say so now.
And the half of the math nobody counts. It isn't only the patient you would have gained. It is how many people are asking right now where to get implants in the Dominican Republic, receiving three clinic names that aren't yours, and emailing one of them. That is already happening. The only question is for how many more months.
What clinics ask us
We rank well locally. Why doesn't that carry over to international patients?
Because it is a different query in a different language, and often a different competitive set. Dominating searches for dentists in Santo Domingo does almost nothing for someone in Ohio asking where to get implants abroad. That person is comparing you against clinics in Costa Rica and Mexico, not against the clinic down your street.
Should we publish prices? Our treatments vary a lot per case.
In dental tourism, more than in any other speciality, yes. Cost is the reason the patient is considering travel at all. If they can't find a range on your site, they find one on a competitor's and anchor there. A range with what it includes and what makes it vary works better than silence, and it filters out the people who were never going to book.
Do we need the whole website in English?
Not the whole thing, and translating everything is usually a waste. What you need in English are the pages an international patient actually reads: the treatments they travel for, what the trip involves, pricing, and what happens after they fly home. The rest can stay in Spanish for your local patients.
Our reviews are in Spanish. Does that hurt us?
It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't help as much as you would expect for an English query. A patient reading English is reassured by reviews they can read. You can't and shouldn't manufacture English reviews, but you can ask international patients for one at the right moment, which most clinics never do.
What do you actually deliver?
The audit: measurement across four systems in English, screenshots with dates, comparison against two clinics you choose, a diagnosis of your Google profile and your website, and a plan ordered by impact. US$400, delivered in five business days.
See what a patient abroad sees
Send us your clinic's name. We'll run the question a real patient would ask, in English, and send you back the screenshots of what came out. No cost.
Measure my clinicOr email info@localposi.com if you would rather have it in writing — proposals, scope and invoicing all go through there.