A patient experiencing TMJ pain searches for a specialist. They find your practice. They visit your website. And then something happens — or more precisely, nothing happens.

The site loads slowly on their phone. The “Book Appointment” button is buried below three scrolls of physician bios. The intake form asks for insurance information they do not have on hand. The online scheduling tool has no availability for two weeks. There is no chat, no text option, no immediate confirmation that a human being is on the other end.

So they press the back button. They visit the next practice. That practice has a clean mobile experience, an instant chat widget that says “We can see you this week,” and a text confirmation within 90 seconds. That practice wins a patient with a lifetime value of $23,000 in a general dental context — or $85,000+ in orthodontics, oral surgery, or specialty care.

This is The Silent Walkaway. It is the dominant revenue leak in clinical healthcare because the industry has uniquely high lifetime patient value combined with uniquely outdated digital intake infrastructure. The average dental practice website converts at 1.2%–2.8% of visitors. Best-in-class intake systems convert at 8%–14%. That gap — measured in walkaway patients per month — is the single largest addressable revenue leak in most practices.

For a specialty medical practice generating $2M in annual revenue, our framework typically identifies 40–120 Silent Walkaways per month. At a conservative lifetime value of $12,000 per patient and a 20% conversion uplift from Protocol installation, the addressable revenue is $576,000 to $1.7M in lifetime patient value — per year of operation.