How to increase OPD footfall in a hospital: start with the phone

Ask a hospital owner how to get more OPD patients and the answer is usually marketing: hoardings, camps, a social media agency. Those can work, but they are the slowest and costliest way to fill a doctor’s diary. Meanwhile most hospitals lose patients every day who had already chosen them: the caller nobody answered at 10 in the morning, the one who rang at 9 at night, the follow-up patient told “come after a month” who never did.

Here are nine levers, in the order they usually pay off. Most cost staff time rather than money.

The nine levers at a glance

The first three win back patients who already picked you; the last two go looking for patients who haven’t, which is why they cost most per patient.

Start with the patients already trying to reach you

1. Answer the booking calls you’re missing

There is no published Indian figure for how many hospital booking calls go unanswered. The closest official number comes from an emergency line, not an OPD: in September 2026 the Delhi High Court recorded that the city’s toll-free ambulance and ICU-bed helpline, with 30 lines and 30 operators, gets about 2,200 calls a day and drops at least 500. Staffed booking centres abroad lose a similar share: NHS Lothian in Scotland lost 30.1% of 446,012 outpatient booking calls in a year, and Northern Ireland’s Southern Trust 26.1% of 317,742 (UK figures).

Patients do book by phone. In a US national survey, 56.4% said phone calls were their main way of booking a medical appointment (US data; we found no national Indian survey of booking channels). In India, AIIMS New Delhi set up a phone call centre for appointments in 2015 because most of its patients could not use its web portal or IVRS. At a tertiary hospital in Uttarakhand, only 26% of OPD patients surveyed used online registration, although 99.5% could use a smartphone.

Here is what unanswered calls can cost, as an illustration, using the arithmetic of our missed-call calculator:

1. 200 booking calls a day, of which 30% go unanswered (an assumption, close to the UK figures): 60 missed calls a day.
2. Half of those callers book elsewhere (an assumption: some call back or walk in): 30 patients a day.
3. Over 300 OPD days: 9,000 visits a year.
4. At an illustrative first-consultation fee of ₹650: ₹58.5 lakh a year in fees.
5. Add the first pharmacy bill, about ₹320 a visit on the calculator’s assumptions, and it comes to about ₹87.3 lakh.

The number you probably don’t know is the unanswered share. Measure it this week:

• Pull the missed-call report from your exchange (EPABX) or the reception mobiles, hour by hour.
• Call your own booking line at 9:30 am, noon and 6:30 pm, and on a Sunday. Note who picks up, and how fast.
• Count how many missed callers were called back, and how many booked.

Call missed callers back the same morning. An example written for this guide, with a made-up doctor:

But calling back 60 missed callers at about two minutes each takes two hours of one person’s day (our arithmetic), and some will have booked elsewhere by then. The lasting fix is more hands in the morning rush, missed calls forwarded to someone who can book, or both.

2. Take bookings after hours

Families decide in the evening. If your line goes quiet at 8 pm, those bookings wait for the morning or go to whoever answers first. The cheapest fix is a call-back list worked before the OPD opens; the fuller ones are night cover or an answering service. Our guide to after-hours calls covers each kind of night call, emergencies included.

3. Book every follow-up before the patient leaves

The patient you have already treated is the easiest to see again, and the easiest to lose. At an Indian tertiary hospital, patients who missed appointments rated forgetfulness and the lack of a reminder as their top reasons, and the authors recommend better reminders and simpler rescheduling. Across 105 studies worldwide, the average no-show rate was about 23% (a global figure; there is no Indian one).

• Turn the doctor’s “review after 7 days” into a date and a time at the desk, before the patient walks out.
• Ask whether they’d like a reminder, and send it the evening before only to those who said yes.
• Make moving an appointment one short call, so a clash becomes a new date instead of a no-show.

Then give patients something good to tell others

4. Shorten the wait, and say how long it will be

Patients judge an OPD by the wait more than by anything they can’t see. At a tertiary hospital in Maharashtra, patients waited 59 minutes on average for 6.9 minutes with the doctor, and those with shorter waits were significantly more satisfied. AIIMS New Delhi found that 79% of its OPD patients arrived before 10 am but only 19% of them had been seen by then, and moved to staggered time slots.

That matters for footfall because patients rarely choose a hospital alone. In a study of in-patients at multispeciality hospitals in northern India, the choice was made most of the time by family members, doctors or both. A family that sat through a four-hour wait remembers it when the next person falls ill.

• Give each patient a time or a short window, not “come at 9”.
• When a doctor is running late, tell the booked patients before they leave home.

5. Look after the doctors who refer to you

GPs, family physicians and smaller nursing homes send patients where they trust the care and hear back about it. Earning that trust costs no money:

• a number for referring doctors that a person answers, and a slot for their patient within a day or two;
• a short note back after the visit, with the patient’s agreement;
• case discussions and talks on new treatments, which the NMC allows as academic discussion if they don’t promote anyone’s own practice or solicit patients (clause 5.1).

What you may not do is pay for referrals. India’s code of medical ethics bars doctors from giving or receiving “any gift, gratuity, commission or bonus” for referring a patient (clause 6.4.1) and from using touts or agents (clause 7.19). The NMC’s October 2026 guidelines add referral fees and lead-generation fees to that list (clause 8.1(vii)).

Make sure people who search find the truth

6. Make your Google listing match reality

Your Business Profile on Google is often the first thing a nearby searcher sees, and wrong timings send them to a closed gate. Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local results, and that there is “no way to request or pay for a better local ranking”. Ignore anyone selling one. Google’s guidelines cover what a hospital needs:

• Hours: your regular hours, plus special hours for holidays and festival days.
• Departments: departments within hospitals may have their own profiles and hours if they are publicly distinct, with a different name and category, such as an emergency department open all night.
• Doctors: doctors count as individual practitioners and can have their own profiles if they see patients at that address during stated hours.
• Phone: the number must connect to that location and be under your control. List the one your team answers.

Keep the same facts on your website. The NMC’s guidelines treat a website directory of your doctors, with their qualifications, specialties, registration details and availability, as patient information rather than advertising (clause 9.1).

7. Ask every patient for an honest review

The number of reviews is one signal Google uses for local ranking, and it suggests asking with a link or a QR code. Its content policy is strict about how:

• Nothing in return: no discount, free test or gift. Incentivised reviews count as fake engagement and are removed.
• Ask everyone, the same way. No asking only happy patients, no discouraging bad reviews, no pressing people to review on the premises, no staff targets, and no reviews from staff or their families.
• Doctors don’t ask patients to review them. The NMC’s 2026 guidelines bar doctors from requesting patient reviews or testimonials to promote themselves on social media (clause 3.2, Explanation V), or from doing it through someone else (clause 8.1(xi)). In a clinic run by a single doctor, a request from the desk can count as the doctor’s own, so check before you start; this advice is written for hospitals.
• When you reply, never confirm that the reviewer was your patient or mention their treatment; patients’ confidences stay private under the code of medical ethics (clause 2.2). Offer a number to sort it out privately.

Go out into the community last

8. Run camps that end in a booking

A screening camp finds people who need care but haven’t looked for it: cataracts, raised blood pressure, high sugar, children not growing as they should. It is also where marketing money is wasted, because a pamphlet rarely turns into a visit.

• Book the follow-up at the camp, with a date and a time, and call the day before.
• Refer only those who need it, and tell them why in plain words.
• Run it as health care, not a sales event. The NMC allows doctors to join health awareness programmes and public health campaigns that don’t promote their own practice or solicit patients (clause 5.1). Campaigns under government programmes are exempt from the guidelines.

9. Reach out by specialty

What the rules rule out

The NMC’s Guidelines on Ethical Advertising and Public Communication, in force since 6 October 2026, cover doctors and hospitals. Beyond the review and referral rules above, they rule out:

• free procedures, discounts, coupons and similar offers likely to encourage unnecessary consultations or tests (clause 8.1(x)), and agency deals that pay per patient (8.1(viii));
• “100% success” or “guaranteed cure” claims, and “best” or “No.1” claims nobody can verify (8.1(iii) and (ix));
• patient testimonials, promotional patient stories and before-and-after photos, even with consent (6.2 and 8.1(v));
• AI-generated promotional campaigns for commercial gain (7.2).

For hospitals, advertising is limited to factual, verifiable information: name, location, contact details, departments, facilities, emergency services and charges (8.3).

Where DrMate fits

The first two levers are phone problems, and they are what DrMate’s AI receptionist is for. It answers your hospital’s own number day and night in everyday Hindi and Hinglish, books into your doctors’ genuinely free times, and puts every caller it can’t help on your team’s call-back list with the reason. DrMate’s front desk shows each booked patient their time and expected wait on a private appointment page.

To see what unanswered calls may cost you, try the calculator with your own numbers, or call our demo line, 080 6553 5931, where the AI receptionist answers as Sunrise Hospital, a sample hospital we made up.