Sixty-three percent of healthcare practices expect lead follow-up and conversion to be their biggest challenges in 2026, even as marketing budgets rise and digital outreach expands. In CallRail’s latest survey of U.S. healthcare practices, teams reported that they’re investing in new channels, boosting online visibility, and using more AI tools to help attract and engage patients earlier in their search.
Practices are fueling growth with higher budgets, but the engine — their intake process — is stalling. Almost half route web forms to a general inbox, and more than half rely solely on front-desk staff to manage every incoming call, email, chat, and form submission. For small teams already juggling walk-ins, scheduling, and patient questions, it doesn’t take much for follow-up to fall behind — and when that happens, even the best marketing can’t turn interest into appointments.
Here are the trends shaping healthcare marketing in 2026 and why improving intake workflows is becoming one of the biggest opportunities for growth.
Trend 1: Budgets are rising as practices diversify their channel mix
Healthcare marketers are entering 2026 with larger budgets and a broader range of channels optimized to help patients discover them faster. In our survey, 62% of practices expect their marketing budget to increase, with another 29% holding steady. Most of that new investment is flowing into digital-first tactics, where influencer marketing (58%), email (50%), paid social (48%), and video (48%) are expected to see the strongest planned growth.
This shift is already underway, driven by rising costs and changing patient behavior.
“We used to allocate 80% of our budget to Google Search — that is down to 20% now. As costs rose and effectiveness shifted, we pivoted heavily into video marketing. The focus is now on creating authentic content that represents the human behind the practice, rather than just writing for algorithms.”
– Eric Hubbard, Founder of Pain Free Dental Marketing
Practices are also branching into emerging formats that enable quick and direct communication. SMS/text (33%), email (32%), and organic social (31%) are among the top tactics teams plan to try for the first time in 2026. These moves reflect a broader shift toward meeting patients where they already spend time.
Marketing tactics healthcare practices plan to test in 2026
Even with this growth in newer digital channels, foundational channels still matter. When asked where they expect to allocate the majority of their 2026 budget overall, practices named traditional marketing (TV, radio, print, billboards) as their top category, followed by paid/organic social and video/content.
Rather than abandoning legacy channels, teams are using them to reinforce awareness and credibility, while digital tactics take on a more direct role in driving inquiries and appointments. Traditional marketing helps establish familiarity and trust over time, while channels like social, video, email, and SMS are increasingly used to capture demand and prompt immediate action.
Healthcare practices' marketing budget priorities for 2026
But growing budgets alone won’t improve results. The practices that get the biggest return on their investment are those that pair strong marketing with organized intake workflows that ensure every inquiry receives a fast and consistent response.
Trend 2: AI is moving from creative support to everyday operational help
AI is no longer just a content assistant; it is now integral to the daily routines of marketing and patient intake. Two-thirds (67%) of practices report using AI to personalize campaigns or improve the patient experience, 53% use it for lead scoring or qualification, and 59% rely on it to aid in attribution and ROI measurement.
How healthcare practices are using AI
At the same time, teams are feeling more confident about using AI safely. This year, 31% of practices cited HIPAA compliance as a challenge. While this remains a concern, the majority now report confidence in using AI within HIPAA requirements, reflecting a growing trust in platforms that offer redaction, role-based access, and stricter data controls specifically designed for healthcare practices.
At the same time, teams are feeling more confident about using AI safely. This year, 31% of practices cited HIPAA compliance as a challenge. While this remains a concern, the majority now report confidence in using AI within HIPAA requirements, reflecting a growing trust in platforms that offer redaction, role-based access, and stricter data controls specifically designed for healthcare practices.
“Intake in a practice is much smoother with AI since it can auto-sort different requests, sending different requests to different people on a team while using no PHI.”
– Baruch Labunski, President at Rank Secure
As Josh James-Lucy, CEO of SM92, notes, “modern healthcare AI platforms now include automatic PHI redaction, role-based access, encrypted data storage, and strict prompt-level controls — all of which make AI a compliance-supporting technology, rather than a risk factor.”
Together, these shifts position AI as an operational partner that can help practices respond faster, stay organized, and keep pace with demand, especially when teams are stretched thin.
Trend 3: Surging patient demand is creating a front-desk bottleneck
As patient outreach becomes more digital, many practices are feeling real strain behind the scenes. With 63% of healthcare organizations identifying lead follow-up and conversion as their biggest bottlenecks heading into 2026, it’s clear that intake capacity isn’t keeping up with marketing efforts that drive demand.
Patients now reach out across every channel imaginable: phone, email, web forms, chatbots, and online portals. For many practices, all inquiries still funnel to one or two front-desk staff who are also juggling in-person check-ins, scheduling, insurance questions, and clinical coordination.
Channels patients use to reach out to practices for the first time
“Lead follow-up and conversion challenges are the most predictable yet most under-addressed pain point that we come across,” notes James-Lucy. “Practices struggle here because patient demand has moved online, but staffing structures haven’t evolved. Practices are still using a model built for phone calls, while most new patients now start online.”
This mismatch leads to lost opportunities, as patients who cannot get in touch quickly often move on to another provider. To close this gap, practices are adopting AI-powered voice agents that handle initial intake without replacing human staff. By answering calls, gathering basic details, and routing inquiries appropriately, voice agents ensure patients are acknowledged quickly while freeing front-desk teams to focus on more complex, high-touch interactions.
“Automated nurture can lift conversions significantly, but adoption is low because practices fear losing 'the human touch.' Ironically, automation makes the human touch possible by freeing staff to engage when it matters.”
– Josh James-Lucy, CEO at SM92
Trend 4: Seamless intake workflows become the new competitive edge
With patient inquiries on the rise and small teams stretched thin, many practices are reevaluating their day-to-day intake processes. Currently, 58% of practices still rely on front-desk staff, and 49% send web forms straight to a general inbox. When everything runs manually across multiple channels, valuable leads easily slip away because maintaining consistent follow-up becomes impossible.
Practices’ intake processes for new leads and patient inquiries
This makes modern intake workflows — integrating call handling, form capture, AI triage, scheduling, and automated follow-up — essential. Instead of switching between several systems, staff can manage every inquiry from a single place, with routing and prioritization handled automatically in the background.
According to Baruch Labunski, President at Rank Secure, this shift could be “one of the biggest transformations coming to healthcare marketing in 2026.”
“Fully packaged intake ecosystems will merge standalone tools — AI voice assistants, real-time scheduling, auto-reminders, and follow-ups — into one system. Practices that adopt this integrated approach will be the fastest, highest-converting, and best overall patient experience providers out there.”
– Baruch Labunski, President at Rank Secure
Trend 5: Attribution visibility closes the marketing confidence gap
Despite rising budgets, a "confidence gap" remains: Only 51% of practices are "extremely confident" they know which channels drive their best customers. The difference often comes down to backend workflows. Our data shows that 84% of confident practices report efficient approval processes, compared to just 72% overall.
Eric Hubbard, Founder of Pain Free Dental Marketing, explains that connected data allows for smarter decisions without needing perfection:
"We live in a multi-channel world where trying to attribute a patient to a single channel is a flawed exercise... The goal isn't perfect data — it's to collapse the 'cone of uncertainty' enough to direct your spend where it actually impacts the patient journey."
Heading into 2026, this visibility is a competitive necessity. The practices seeing the biggest returns are those that connect the dots between the ad click and the final appointment.
How practices can convert more inquiries into patients in 2026
Marketing is getting more sophisticated, AI tools are getting smarter, and patients are reaching out across more channels than ever. However, without a clear and consistent process to capture and follow up on every inquiry, many opportunities stall before an appointment is ever booked.
CallRail provides practices with a single lead engagement platform to manage every call, form, and message. By connecting campaigns to booked appointments through Call Tracking and Form Tracking, you can clearly see which efforts drive high-value patients. To close the intake gap, Premium Conversation Intelligence™ surfaces key insights from every conversation, while Voice Assist helps you respond faster with less manual effort, automatically answering and triaging calls when the front desk is busy or after hours. Meanwhile, automated follow-up texts keep potential patients engaged — helping small teams move faster and convert more inquiries into patients.
Want to strengthen your practice’s intake and marketing performance in 2026?
