Field Agents for Diagnostic Centers: Proving the Door-to-Door Visit Actually Happened

Walk into almost any diagnostic center outside a hospital gate in Bangladesh and ask where the patients come from. A large share arrive because somebody went to their door — a marketing agent who knows the para, talks to families, and brings them in for tests. The model works. What doesn't work is how it is managed: a notebook of names, commissions negotiated from memory, and no way to know whether Tuesday's twelve visits happened anywhere except in the notebook.

The two leaps of faith in agent marketing

The first leap is the visit itself. An agent paid to canvass a neighbourhood can report ten doors or forty, and the owner has no way to tell the difference until weeks later, when the referrals do or don't arrive. The second leap is attribution. When a patient walks in on Thursday, was she the woman the agent registered on Monday, or a walk-in the agent is now claiming? Commission disputes almost always live in that gap — and they corrode the very relationships the model depends on.

GPS turns a claim into a record

The SihatSuite Field Agents add-on gives each agent a mobile app. When they register a patient at a doorstep, the app records the GPS position of that moment along with the patient's details — and when they revisit later, that call is pinned too. The center's dashboard shows every visit on a map. There is a second, quieter check as well: the app records the time the phone captured the fix and the server records when it received it. A visit 'logged' hours after it supposedly happened stands out on its own.

None of this requires special hardware. The app runs on the inexpensive Android phones agents already carry, uses the phone's own GPS, and doesn't depend on Google services being installed. An agent signs in with an account the center controls — deactivate the account or drop the add-on, and the app stops working that instant.

Attribution that doesn't need arguing about

The patient an agent registers at the door is stamped as that agent's registration in the same patient database the front desk uses. When she comes in for tests — next week or next year — the invoice picks up the referral automatically, and the referral flows into the same commission report the center already runs for doctors and other referrers. Nobody has to remember, and nobody has to take anybody's word for it. The front desk can still override a referrer when reality demands it; the point is that the default is right.

Targets measured in taka collected, not promises

Each agent can be given a monthly collection target. Progress is measured on payments actually received against invoices attributed to that agent — not on invoices raised, which can sit unpaid, and not on patient counts, which can be inflated with people who never test. The agent sees a live progress bar in the app; the owner sees the same number on the dashboard. When the month closes, the conversation about performance starts from a shared figure.

The small tools that make agents better, not just watched

• Follow-up reminders: the agent sets a date at the doorstep — 'collect the sample Thursday' — and the app keeps an overdue list so promises to patients survive a busy week.
• A doorstep rate card: current test and package prices, curated by the center, so agents quote real numbers instead of guesses.
• Patient history at the door: what business this patient has done before, and the center's notes, without phoning the front desk.
• One-tap calling from the patient card, and the last visit's location on a map for finding the house again.

What it costs and how it attaches

Field Agents is a ৳1,000/month add-on to any SihatSuite subscription — one price for the center, however many agents it runs. It attaches to what you already have: the same patient database, the same invoices, the same commission report. If door-to-door marketing brings you patients, the question is not whether the model works — it is whether you can see it working. This makes it visible.

Related resources

• SihatSuite pricing — modules and add-ons
• Diagnostic management software in Bangladesh
• Talk to us about field agents