The Healthy Glacier

14 articles

Most of a patient’s journey happens beneath the surface. Field notes on patient acquisition and the operations behind every booked appointment.

Featured · Practice Growth

I just opened a dental practice. What should I do about marketing?

October 5, 2026

Not what the vendors in your inbox suggest. The order we would do things in: make the patient journey work before buying ads, size the budget from your monthly new-patient target, and know the 2026 numbers ($8 a click, $72.97 a lead, 63.7% of new patients by referral) before the first invoice.

Why can't a dental office tell you exactly what your insurance will pay?

September 28, 2026

The office verified your insurance, and the claim still paid a different amount. Nobody lied and nothing malfunctioned: verification and payment are different workflows. What changes between the estimate and the claim, and what automation can honestly fix.

Dental Insurance

Should chiropractors use an AI receptionist?

September 18, 2026

The debate is not whether AI can sound human. It is who answers the 6:30 PM call. What to automate in a chiropractic front desk (after-hours, booking, recall), what stays human, and how to test it before going live.

AI Front Desk

We analyzed 1,140 ChatGPT and Gemini answers. Here’s how AI decides which healthcare practices to recommend.

September 7, 2026

An industry report from 1,140 ChatGPT and Gemini answers across 19 markets: 6,492 recommendations, 2,716 citations. Recommendations reshuffle within minutes, nobody owns a market, the engines disagree on half of everything, and Yelp is cited zero times.

Industry Report

AI visibility is more than whether AI can crawl your website

September 4, 2026

A practice was recommended by ChatGPT while its website was barely readable to AI. What actually feeds AI answers: reviews, directories, third-party mentions, and the evidence connecting a business to a specific service.

AI Visibility

More patients are cancelling in 2026. A reminder text won’t fix it.

September 1, 2026

Insurance got more expensive, three million people dropped it, and one in three practices now sees more no-shows. Four changes to make before open enrollment on November 1.

Patient Retention

“I’ll think about it” shouldn’t end the conversation

August 24, 2026

A patient leaves without scheduling, the practice means to follow up, and the day takes over. How an AI follow-up agent keeps treatment-plan conversations open until there’s a clear next step.

Patient Follow-Up

Does AI recommend your practice, or your competitor's?

August 17, 2026

Patients now ask ChatGPT and Gemini which practice to book. How AI decides who to recommend, how to check your AI visibility free, and what to fix first.

AI Visibility