Most hospital marketing isn't aligned with how care decisions happen. It's not that the messaging isn't reaching people. It just might not always be reaching the right people.
Recent data shows that health systems are investing heavily to influence patient choice, but it also points out that only 34% of them self-refer.¹ So, while patients are more empowered than ever, physicians still play a strong role in the flow of care. Modern healthcare marketers need to solve this disconnect if they want to maximize their marketing ROI—and health system vitality.
The growing cost of misaligned marketing
Healthcare marketing spend continues to rise. It's estimated that U.S. healthcare advertising spend exceeded $38 billion in 2025,² but fragmented patient journeys and referral leakage still limit growth.
Estimates suggest health systems
lose 10–15% of potential revenue
from patient leakage.³
Why is this happening?
With medical information more accessible, decision-making now spreads across patients, physicians, and systems. In fact, 71% of patients research providers online before selecting one.⁴ But even in a digital-first world, physician referrals are still a critical driver of specialty care decisions, especially in high-value service lines such as oncology, cardiology, and orthopedics. These areas remain heavily dependent on referrals influenced by relationships, familiarity, and perceived quality of care.⁵ That fragmentation creates a challenge for hospitals: since referral decisions are fluid, rather than fixed, they become an inflection point that can lead to hospital growth—or contraction.
The hidden driver of better care isn't expertise. It's familiarity.
If referral decisions are fluid, what determines where they go? Healthcare has long tried to improve performance through better data, incentives, and access. But a study in JAMA Internal Medicine points to a different driver: familiarity between physicians.⁶
When primary care physicians referred patients to specialists they trained with, patient experience scores improved dramatically. Nothing about the specialist's expertise changed, just the level of familiarity. Notably, it wasn't merely patient perception. Physician behavior changed as well, including how care was delivered.
This is about more than just relationships. It's about the impact of familiarity. When a specialist recognizes the referring physician, there's context, memory, and a baseline of trust already in place. The interaction doesn't start from zero. It starts with a shared understanding of expectations, standards, and professional credibility.
A cue for physician marketing
Most hospital marketing focuses on awareness—getting a name in front of someone and hoping it sticks. But awareness alone doesn't create familiarity. Seeing a brand name isn't the same as knowing an individual physician, so it doesn't carry the same weight in a referral decision. Especially when the decision needs to be made quickly, often from memory, and has real patient care implications attached.
The JAMA study suggests accumulated familiarity drives action—think repeated exposure in a professional context, reinforced over time. Importantly, the study also suggests it doesn't need to be constant or even in person. Familiarity can influence decisions through connections created at a distance if there's a meaningful, sustained presence that builds recognition, credibility, and recall over time. So, it's not just about being seen. It's being seen in the right context, often enough to feel known.
The takeaway isn't that every physician needs a personal relationship with every referrer. It's that decisions improve when physicians don't feel like strangers to each other. Better care doesn't only come from expertise, but from association.
Building familiarity at a distance
Since familiarity improves care, the question becomes how to create it among professionals who might never meet face-to-face. And the answer starts with relevance.
Familiarity forms when physicians encounter each other in meaningful professional contexts: through shared clinical interests, useful content, peer perspectives, and repeated exposure that signals expertise over time. Not as a one-time impression, but as an ongoing presence that builds recognition and credibility with each interaction.
This is where physician marketing has an opportunity to evolve. Instead of focusing on reach alone, it can focus on context and continuity. It can show up in ways that align with how physicians think, learn, and make decisions. When done well, that presence starts to create the sustained familiarity that carries meaningful clinical context.
And that's what ultimately changes behavior. When a referral decision needs to be made, physicians don't start from a blank slate. They draw from what feels familiar, credible, and trusted. Building familiarity doesn't happen all at once. But it does compound. And over time, it can shift how physicians see each other—and where patients go next.
Putting these insights into action
If you have questions about how this applies to your current approach, it's worth a conversation. Your Client Success Team can help you think through what it might look like in practice.