A new office is the one moment you can get everything right from the start. Work through this in order, because several items have long lead times and block others.
Eight weeks before opening
- Add the office to your single source of truth with its canonical name, address including suite, phone, hours, and coordinates.
- Decide the phone number. Prefer a local area code, and choose one that will survive a phone system change.
- Order signage. This is the long lead item, and verification depends on it.
- Confirm the exact suite number as it will appear on the door, and match your records to it.
- Begin credentialing and payer contracting for the new location. This is the slowest item of all and the most commonly started late.
- Draft the website office page, ready to publish.
Four weeks before
- Publish the office page, including arrival, parking, and entrance instructions.
- Add MedicalClinic structured data for this office only, with its own coordinates.
- Add the office to your locations index page and navigation.
- Link the office page to and from the treatment pages available there.
- Link clinician bios to the office and the office to the bios.
- Update NPI records for clinicians who will practise there.
- Update credentialing records with the new practice location.
Opening week
Do not create profiles before you can actually serve patients there.
- Create the Google Business Profile. Search first to check no auto-generated listing already exists, and claim it if one does.
- Start verification immediately, and expect video verification. Have signage in place and clear the frame of any patient information.
- Claim Apple Business Connect and check the map pin sits at the entrance patients should use.
- Claim Bing Places and check the pin.
- Set the primary category, secondary categories, services with descriptions, and every accurate attribute.
- Point the profile website field at the office page, not the homepage.
- Upload photos: exterior with signage, entrance, parking, reception, treatment rooms.
First month
- Submit the office to the major aggregators.
- Verify the office appears in each payer directory you participate in, and dial the published number to confirm where it rings.
- Add the office to your vertical directory profiles.
- Add it to modality locators where the treatment is provided there.
- Update your referral one-pager with the new location and which treatments are available.
- Tell your referral network, in writing.
- Add the office to your listing inventory with login ownership for every platform.
First three months
- Capture a baseline for the five numbers so later progress can be evidenced.
- Start the review habit at this office: cards at checkout and a QR code sign at reception.
- Run your first AI prompt set for this office and city, and record presence.
- Confirm aggregator submissions propagated, and correct anything that reverted.
- Check for duplicate listings, which sometimes appear from third-party data after opening.
- Post a profile update introducing the office, with parking and entrance detail.
The three things most often missed
- Credentialing started too late. Insured patients cannot find you until the location is in payer directories, and that takes months.
- Profile pointed at the homepage. Every office needs its own landing page.
- No signage at verification time. The single most common cause of a failed launch verification.
The next lesson sets out a 90-day plan for an existing practice.