Physicals, flu shots and open enrollment for clinics

Mid-August is the thick of school and sports physical season, and the start of a five-month run in which a primary or urgent care clinic’s demand is set by dates on other people’s calendars: the first day of practice, the flu-shot window, two open enrollment periods and the respiratory season. Most of them land in roughly the same weeks every year, and all of them reward the clinic that set up its profiles and patient messages a few weeks early.

This is the calendar we plan clinic marketing around, with the source behind each date.

August: physicals, and the forms that cannot wait

Florida makes the point most sharply. Its statute 1006.20 requires the state’s high school athletic association to make every student in interscholastic athletics pass a medical evaluation each year before any practice, tryout, workout or conditioning. A student without the form sits out, so parents book in a hurry and take whoever can see their child this week.

Two things belong on your profile and site now:

• Physical appointments bookable online, with evening and Saturday slots shown if you offer them.
• A plain note on what to bring and which school or league forms you complete.

If you advertise a discounted physical, read your state’s rule first. Florida’s statute 456.062 requires an ad from a physician, osteopathic physician or nurse offering a free or discounted examination to carry a statement in capitals: the patient may refuse to pay, cancel payment or be reimbursed for any other service performed as a result of the ad within 72 hours of responding.

August also brings a respiratory bump that catches clinics off guard. The CDC’s MMWR review of the 2024-25 season, published in February, found SARS-CoV-2 test positivity peaked at 17.9% in the week ending August 10, 2024, months before winter, with a smaller second peak of 6.7% in the week ending January 4, 2025. Urgent care hours need to be right in summer as well.

September and October: the flu-shot window

ACIP’s recommendations for the 2025-26 season, published last August, said that for most people who need only one dose, flu vaccination should ideally be offered in September or October. Unless this season’s guidance says otherwise, that is the window to plan around, and it changes timing more than budget:

• The reminder to your own patients goes out in the first week of September, when the window opens, not in November when it is closing.
• Walk-in shot hours go on every Google profile and on the site at the same moment.
• Search ads for flu shots, if you run them, start in late August so they are live for the first searches.

RSV keeps its own clock and starts in the South. The same MMWR report placed the earliest RSV epidemic onset of the 2024-25 season in Florida, in the week ending September 28, 2024, followed by the rest of the South, while national onset came in the week ending November 9. A clinic in Tampa and a clinic in Minneapolis should not run the same October.

October 15 to December 7: Medicare’s window

Medicare.gov lists open enrollment as October 15 to December 7. Patients comparing Medicare Advantage plans often check whether their doctors are in network, and a clinic whose accepted plans read differently on its site, its Google profiles and a booking site loses some of those patients to plain confusion. Reconcile the list before October 15, and if you are not taking new Medicare patients, say so in one line.

Two more Medicare facts shape messages to older patients. CMS set the annual Part B deductible at $283 for 2026, so patients who have already met it may want visits booked before the year turns. And CMS’s telehealth FAQ, updated in February, says Medicare patients can receive telehealth services anywhere in the country through the end of next year; after that, except for behavioral health, they will generally need to be at a medical facility in a rural area. A telehealth follow-up option is worth promoting while it stays open to them.

November to January: the Marketplace and the new-plan patient

HealthCare.gov sets Marketplace open enrollment from November 1 to January 15, with December 15 the last day to enroll or change plans for coverage that starts January 1. In January, patients on new plans go looking for in-network doctors. The clinics that catch them have a current plan list on every profile, a line saying new patients are welcome, and online booking that works on a phone.

December to February: the respiratory peak

The 2024-25 season gives the shape. RSV test positivity peaked at 11.0% in the week ending December 21, 2024. Flu test positivity peaked at 31.6% in the week ending February 1, 2025. The RSV epidemic ended in the week ending March 29. Seasons differ, though: an interim MMWR report in March found the 2025-26 flu season dominated by a drifted A(H3N2) strain, subclade K. Watch your own state’s reports rather than leaning on last year’s dates.

For urgent care, these are the weeks when Maps decides most visits. Holiday hours entered well ahead, an accurate open-now status and someone on the phone at opening time matter more than any ad.

What you may send your own patients

Most of this calendar runs on messages to patients you already have: the physical reminder, the flu-shot clinic, the plan-change note in November. HIPAA’s definition of marketing leaves out, as long as no third party pays for the message, communications about a patient’s treatment and communications describing the clinic’s own health services. Those can go from your own scheduling or messaging system. Uploading the patient list to an ad platform is a different matter, and one for your compliance lead before anyone else.

What to do this month

• Open online booking for physicals and post the forms you complete and what to bring.
• Write the flu-shot reminder now and schedule it for the first week of September.
• Enter Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year hours on every Google profile.
• Reconcile accepted plans across your site, Google profiles and any booking site before October 15.
• Read any discounted-physical ad against your state medical board’s rule before it runs.

None of these dates is a surprise, and that is the point: a clinic that does August’s setup in July and September’s in August spends the busy weeks seeing patients instead of fixing listings. The profile side of this is on our Google Business Profile page, the recall side on our GoHighLevel page, and the full plan for medical clinics is on its own page.