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Know which ads book new patients, without telling Google or Meta who booked.
Hippo is HIPAA-compliant ad tracking for dental practices and orthodontists. It counts the calls, forms and online bookings your ads produce, in an account you own, and keeps patient identities and procedures out of what Google and Meta receive.
No annual contracts.
Transparent pricing.
We set it up for you.
A new dental patient usually starts with a phone call, and most practices learn Meta's health rules the day the Lead event stops counting
Most dental practices find out about Meta's health rules when the agency says the Lead event stopped counting. Meta puts a dental site in its health category, cuts the lower-funnel events, and the campaigns lose the signal they were bidding on. The path itself runs from ad click to a call or an online booking, then the first visit, the treatment plan and the production that follows.
Most new patients still call, and an online booking usually finishes on the scheduling vendor's page, not yours. What the account counts as a conversion decides whether the numbers mean anything.
What is worth counting:
- a call from an ad that books a new-patient appointment
- an online booking
- a new-patient form from your site
- for implants, aligners and cosmetic work, a booked consult
What isn't:
- clicks
- calls from existing patients
- page views
A campaign can fill the phones with recall calls and existing patients.
Here is the sum, with example numbers.
The sum, with example numbers
- Ad spend a month
- $3,000
- New-patient calls and bookings
- 30
- Cost per call or booking
- $100
- Bookings that become patients in the chair
- two in three
- A new patient costs
- about $150
Example figures. Put in your own. Each line needs a count you trust, and the last one needs the campaign it came from.
Try the sum with your own numbers. If the new patients are not tied to campaigns, that is the gap Hippo closes. It records the call, the form and the online booking, ties each to the campaign that produced it, and sends the conversion to Google and Meta without the name, email, phone number, IP address or procedure.
What dentists and their marketers say
They can't tell what's working
Google's count, the call tracker's count and the front desk's count, and none of them agree.
Google spits a number of "conversions" at me but I have to dig a lot deeper to see if those are real patients scheduling appointments and coming in the door.
In-house marketer, multi-location dental group Do they show you the specific number of new leads? What's the ROI on each campaign?
Bookkeeper, family dental practice While the number of conversions acc to google rarely matches the number of actual calls tracked on our call tracker, the number has become increasingly disparate. Some have approx 100+ call conversions in google but 10-20 calls in our call tracker.
PPC manager, dental agency 
They lost the signal
Meta's health category switched off the lower-funnel events, and the workarounds kept failing.
I cannot seem to track Lower funnel conversions like SubmitApplication for people who submit the quiz on our landing page due to it being restricted by the Health & Wellness Category.
Agency running ads for several dental practices GTM custom HTML tags for Schedule and Lead events, Event Setup Tool, Custom Conversion on the thank-you URL. All suppressed.
Agency running Meta ads for a dental practice In dental and healthcare niches, Meta often strips or limits event visibility even if the technical setup itself is correct, which is why you still only see PageView firing reliably.
Agency, dental and healthcare accounts
Google and Meta treat a dental site as health content, and that shapes what you can measure
Google needs no certification for a dental practice to advertise, but it treats invasive procedures and the treatment of health conditions(opens in a new tab) as a sensitive health category. Advertisers in that category cannot use their own audience lists(opens in a new tab): no Customer Match, no remarketing lists, no lookalikes. Health conversions cannot be measured with enhanced conversions(opens in a new tab) or offline uploads, and Google does not offer a BAA for Google Analytics(opens in a new tab). Its one BAA is for Local Services Ads(opens in a new tab), where the lead is a call counted in Google's own dashboard.
Hippo changes none of that. It does not lift the category, adds no words, keywords or claims to your site, and changes no ad copy. It measures what happens after the click.
Meta
Meta sorts data sources into categories, and a site with a patient portal(opens in a new tab) is a named example of the health and wellness one; dental sites have been placed there since January 2025. That category can block lower-funnel events(opens in a new tab) such as Lead and Schedule, blocks custom events until they are reviewed(opens in a new tab), flags a custom conversion that names a condition(opens in a new tab), and you cannot change the category Meta assigns(opens in a new tab). Meta's own advice is to move to upper-funnel events(opens in a new tab).
Meta's rules name medical procedures, treatments and testing(opens in a new tab) among the information it must not receive, the rule covers the names of your events(opens in a new tab), and its core setup strips anything in a URL after the domain(opens in a new tab). An event called "implant consult booked" breaks it. Meta states that its own filters are no substitute for yours(opens in a new tab).
An event name, before and after
"implant consult booked"Breaks Meta's terms
A neutral event nameWhat Hippo sends
Sent without the patient's
- name
- phone number
- IP address
- procedure
With audiences closed off and lower-funnel events restricted, the events that still flow are what steer bidding. Hippo sends them under neutral names that carry no procedure and nothing that identifies the patient, and keeps a log of new patients by campaign that is yours whatever Meta blocks.
Sources: Google, Health in personalized advertising(opens in a new tab) · Google, Personalized advertising(opens in a new tab) · Google, Customer data policies(opens in a new tab) · Google, HIPAA and Google Analytics(opens in a new tab) · Google, Business Associate Agreements for Local Services(opens in a new tab) · Meta, Data source categories(opens in a new tab) · Meta, Data sharing restrictions(opens in a new tab) · Meta, Restrictions on custom conversions(opens in a new tab) · Meta, About prohibited information(opens in a new tab) · Meta, Core setup(opens in a new tab). As of 10/7/26.
HIPAA covers your practice, and the wiretap laws are where the money came from
Federal
HIPAA
A dental practice that submits claims electronically(opens in a new tab) is a covered entity, and HHS names the page every dental case is built on: tracking on a page that permits individuals to schedule appointments(opens in a new tab) can reach PHI, and a tracking vendor receiving it is a business associate, and a BAA is required(opens in a new tab). HIPAA has no private right of action, which is why the cases below came under other laws.
Federal
Federal Wiretap Act
$10,000It allows statutory damages of $10,000 per plaintiff, and no proof of harm. A practice's own consent to the tracking is no defense when the disclosure itself breaks HIPAA, and the claim survived against both a scheduling vendor and the practices that embedded its widget.
State
Illinois, Wisconsin and Maryland
Illinois(opens in a new tab) and Maryland(opens in a new tab) require every party's consent to intercept an electronic communication, and Wisconsin's wiretap act(opens in a new tab) carries $100 a day or $1,000 per plaintiff. Claims under all three went forward against dental practices in 2026, including a single clinic in Appleton.
State
California
$5,000The state's privacy law(opens in a new tab) sets $5,000 per violation with no proof of harm. The California Dental Association has warned members about demand letters under it and says the claimants could be anyone who visited the site(opens in a new tab).
State
Washington
The My Health My Data Act(opens in a new tab) exempts the PHI HIPAA already covers and reaches the rest: the visitor who read your implant page, called, and never booked.
Enforcement in Dental
Aspen Dental(opens in a new tab)
Up to $18.5 million
Aspen Dental, which supports about 1,100 offices, settled claims that tracking tools on the pages where patients booked appointments sent their data to Meta and Google. It agreed to settlement funds totaling approximately $18.5 million(opens in a new tab) for about 2.2 million people who booked through its site.
Dental Intelligence(opens in a new tab)
In progress
Patients sued the maker of an online scheduling tool and practices that embedded it, alleging Google tracking carried the reason for the appointment, the clinic and the insurer. The court found the practices had installed the tool directly onto their practice websites(opens in a new tab) and kept them in the case. The vendor has agreed to a proposed $5.75 million settlement(opens in a new tab); the final approval hearing is scheduled for March 2027.
Dentologie(opens in a new tab)
Settled
A patient alleged that Dentologie, a Chicago dental group, shared patients' information with Google through tracking on its website. After the court refused to send the case to arbitration, Dentologie settled(opens in a new tab) in January 2026 on terms that are not public.
Opencare(opens in a new tab)
In progress
Patients sued Opencare(opens in a new tab), a dental booking marketplace, in June 2025, alleging that Google and TikTok tracking on its website collected information about their dental conditions and appointments. The case is pending and the claims are allegations.
What the cases have in common:
The pages were booking pages.
The class in each case was defined by who booked online.
The tools were ordinary.
The Meta Pixel, Google Analytics and Google's tags, some of them inside a vendor's scheduling widget.
Size did not decide it.
A single Wisconsin clinic and a Chicago group were named beside the national chain and the software vendor.
The federal Wiretap Act reaches any practice with a booking page, and the state laws add their own damages on top.
See what your booking page sends to Google and Meta →(opens in a new tab)How Hippo works
Your website
Book your appointment
Book now
Call us
Booking
Call
Hippo
Records events
Removes identifying information
Sends clean conversion data
Excluded from conversion events
Names
Conditions
IP addresses
Clean conversion events only
Google / Meta
Booking
Call
Remove the pixels that send PHI.
Take the Google and Meta pixels off your site.
Paste one snippet.
Hippo records visits, bookings, and calls, then removes patient names, health details, and IP addresses from the conversion events sent to Google and Meta.
Send clean conversions back to Google and Meta.
Google and Meta receive conversion signals they can use to optimize your campaigns. Patient names, health details, and IP addresses stay out of those events.
With your phones, your scheduler and your practice software untouched. Hippo runs on your own domain and records the call, the form and the booking. Your phone system, your scheduler and your practice software stay as they are; what changes is what leaves the page. If an agency runs your ads, they keep their reporting and you keep the data and the accounts.
If you already pay for call tracking, keep it. Hippo ties the call, the form and the booking to the campaign and sends Google and Meta a conversion with nothing that identifies the patient.
Supported integrations
Hippo works with the ad platforms and website tools your practice already uses.
Conversion
Hippo
What you get
Booked new patients, by campaign
See which campaigns led to consult requests and bookings, and what each one cost.
Your numbers, in your account
An independent record of results in an account you own. If you change agencies, it stays with you.
Call tracking
Calls that start from an ad are counted as conversions alongside forms and bookings.
A record of what was sent
A log of every event that went to Google and Meta and what was removed from it first.
Pricing
1,000 visitors/month
$99/month
Month to month.
Start now, no demo call1,000 visitors/month(opens in a new tab)2,000 visitors/month
$199/month
Month to month.
Start now, no demo call2,000 visitors/month(opens in a new tab)10,000 visitors/month
$299/month
Month to month.
Start now, no demo call10,000 visitors/month(opens in a new tab)
Every plan includes:
- BAA signed at checkout
- No setup fees
- Cancel anytime. No compliance add-on that locks you in the day you enable it.
Server-side conversion tracking under a BAA, at a price a practice can actually pay.
Frequently asked questions
Meta cut our Lead event. Why, and can new patients still be counted?
Meta assigns dental sites to its health and wellness data-source category, and you cannot change a category Meta assigns(opens in a new tab). Hippo cannot lift it either. Under that category Meta blocks specific mid- and lower-funnel events(opens in a new tab) and holds custom events until they are reviewed, which is what agencies saw in January 2025. A booking sent with no procedure, no URL path and nothing that identifies the patient is the kind of event that still flows, and your log of new patients by campaign stays yours whatever Meta blocks.
Our agency uploads offline conversions and uses enhanced conversions. Is that allowed for dental?
Google says conversions tied to sensitive categories cannot be used for measurement in enhanced conversions or uploads(opens in a new tab), and a patient's hashed email sent to Google is still a disclosure under HIPAA. Google offers a BAA for Local Services Ads and none for Google Ads or Analytics. What remains is the standard conversion sent from your site with the identifiers and the procedure removed, which is what Hippo sends.
Our bookings happen in a scheduling widget. Can you count them?
Yes. Most dental schedulers open the vendor's booking page from a button on your site, and a few open inside your page. Hippo counts the click and the call from your page and the completed booking through its scheduling connections, so the campaign report shows calls, forms and booked appointments together.
Our phone is the funnel. Does this count calls?
Yes. Most new dental patients call, and few fill in a form, so a report built on form fills undercounts every campaign. Hippo attributes the call, the form and the booking to the campaign that produced it. If you already run a call tracker, keep it; Hippo sends Google and Meta a de-identified conversion either way.
Our agency runs the ads. Who installs this, and who owns the data?
We install it for you on a subdomain of your own domain; the agency keeps running the campaigns and sees the same conversions in Google Ads and Meta. The account and the data are yours, which matters when an agency built the ad accounts and the contract ends.
We are a single office. The lawsuits are against the chains, aren't they?
The classes in the dental cases were defined by who booked online, not by the size of the practice. In the scheduling-widget case the court kept a multi-state group and a single Wisconsin clinic in beside the vendor, and Dentologie, a Chicago group, settled. In California, the dental association has warned that demand letters could come from anyone who visited the site(opens in a new tab).
Google Local Services Ads signs a BAA with dentists. Does that cover us?
It covers the Local Services lead: Google requires providers who are subject to HIPAA(opens in a new tab) to accept its BAA before running them. The lead is a call or message counted in Google's own dashboard. Nothing comparable exists for Google Ads, Google Analytics or Meta, so a practice running all three has one covered channel and two that are not.
We have a cookie banner. Isn't that consent?
Not for the booking. HHS says a cookie banner is not a HIPAA authorization(opens in a new tab), and the wiretap claims in the dental cases turn on whether the practice disclosed what was in the booking, which a banner does not change. Hippo waits for consent where it is required and removes identifiers before anything reaches Google or Meta.
Should we talk to a lawyer about the tracking on our website?
Yes, if you want to know how these laws apply to your practice. This page describes laws, policies and court cases for general information and is not legal advice. Hippo handles the tracking; an attorney can advise you on your obligations.
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