Quantifying, Scheduling, and AI: What You Missed at HMPS

Last month, our team converged in Las Vegas, NV for the annual Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategies (HMPS) conference. This conference brings together top healthcare industry experts and focuses on actionable strategies and solutions, making it a yearly highlight for our team. This year’s program was packed with valuable insights showcasing the flexibility and creativity that healthcare organizations demonstrate in a dynamic, ever-evolving industry landscape. Here are our team’s top three sessions and key takeaways. 

Online Scheduling Secrets: Simplify Access, Enhance Engagement, and Reduce Workload
Presenters: Michelle Schmidt, Heidi Shalev, Christina Valls

This session brought together two very different organizations: Cedars Sinai and Austin Regional Clinic. Despite their differences in size and populations served, both acknowledged similar online scheduling objectives and solutions. Austin Regional Clinic discussed its focus on working cross-functionally to allow direct, open scheduling that enables patients to see the same availability online as they would have access to on the phone. They confirmed that well over 80% of their audience utilizes online scheduling, debunking the myth that online is primarily for younger patients. Cedars Sinai reiterated the value of open scheduling and emphasized using all available scheduling avenues to meet a strategic vision, rather than waiting for a perfect, all-encompassing solution. And, they shared impressive online scheduling acceleration attributed to design and access optimization.

Key Takeaway: Prioritize patient-friendly optimizations to drive conversion and avoid drop-offs. 

Track and Quantify: Physician Marketing Efforts
Presenters: Kate Schmelz, Kelly McKenna-Petrie

We were so excited for our own Kelly McKenna-Petrie to join Kate Schemlz, Regional Program Manager of Clinical Marketing at City of Hope, for this session. The duo kicked off by diving into the current challenges that physicians face, including increasing caseloads, the burden of keeping up-to-date with medical information, and clinical responsibilities. Physicians are interested in learning about new trials, treatments, or procedures, but often feel overwhelmed. Kate shared how City of Hope navigated this landscape to generate marketing impact for new geographies post-merger and how they track and quantify their ROI. She also emphasized the value of shared objectives and communications to enable cross-team collaboration between marketing and physician liaisons. By tracking all data, including Doximity’s detailed campaign reporting, in a shared, integrated CRM, all parties get clear visibility and can see influenced referrals and referral volume to demonstrate program value and inform future campaigns.

Key takeaway: Supercharge marketing impact by collaborating across teams and quantify success by sharing and integrating data.

The 411 on Changes to Google's Search Results
Presenter: Carrie Liken

Of course, there were many sessions devoted to the depth and breadth of AI’s current and anticipated impact on healthcare. But, this fascinating session focused on arguably the biggest change to search and search engine results pages: Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE). This AI-powered experience provides answers sourced from multiple sites directly on the search results page. While not fully launched to all users yet, this update to the search experience is already causing a significant reduction in clicks as users can see relevant, consolidated information without selecting a specific site. Presenter Carrie Liken shared how organizations can adapt to what she called “generative experience optimization” (rather than search engine optimization). KPIs will need to shift. Rather than optimizing for clicks, focus on building content that allows Google’s AI to reference your data and surface your information. And, make it easy for visitors to act when they get to your website, since those who make it there are signaling they’re ready to act. 

Key Takeaway: Google’s experimental SGE will fundamentally change search, and healthcare organizations need to shift their KPIs to match the new search experience. 

Of course, there are always too many great sessions to recap. Explore the full conference agenda here.