What is this study measuring?
The YellowHorns Private Practice Response-Time Benchmark measures how quickly a prospective patient receives an acknowledgement and a useful next step after a standard non-clinical enquiry. Those are separate timestamps. An instant receipt does not count as a useful response when it gives no ownership, realistic timeframe or action.
The study is designed around the operating experience a real prospective patient encounters. It records channel, date, local time, business-hours status, acknowledgement time, useful-response time, whether a human became involved, whether the service context was preserved and whether a clear next step was offered.
Why are results not published yet?
The strategy calls for original YellowHorns data with attributable methodology. The underlying completed dataset was not provided with the implementation plan, so publishing a headline statistic now would fabricate evidence. This page therefore publishes the research protocol and current fieldwork status, not invented findings.
Results will be added only after the sample is complete, duplicate or invalid observations are resolved and the denominator is frozen. The final release will show sample size, fieldwork dates, inclusion rules, exclusions, missing observations, distribution measures and the number of practices in each reported segment.
How will practices be sampled?
The intended sample covers independent US private practices with a visible enquiry route and a service that can reasonably receive a non-clinical prospective-patient question. Enterprise health systems, emergency services, practices without a functioning contact route and duplicate locations will be excluded from the main comparison.
A standard enquiry must avoid clinical symptoms and protected information. Fieldwork should be distributed across weekday and after-hours windows, with the time zone recorded. The study will disclose measurement where required and will not publish individual practice names without permission.
How will response quality be coded?
Acknowledgement means the practice or its system confirms receipt. Useful response means the prospective patient can identify what happens next, who owns the reply or which approved action is available. A response that merely repeats marketing copy is not automatically useful, and a fast response is not scored as clinical quality.
Coding will separate automated, human and mixed responses. Ambiguous observations will receive a second review. The final methodology will publish the coding rubric and examples with identifying details removed so another researcher can understand how each category was applied.
What will the final report include?
The primary results will report median response time, distribution bands, acknowledgement coverage and useful-response coverage. Means will appear only with the distribution because a small number of very long delays can distort an average. Segments will be published only when their sample is large enough to avoid a misleading comparison.
The report will also disclose limitations. It will not claim that response time alone causes booking, that one mystery enquiry represents every staff interaction or that results generalise beyond the sample. Where downstream booking data is unavailable, the report will say so rather than implying conversion.