touch point podcast

91% of healthcare marketers say data drives their decisions. 1% can connect the majority of their spend to actual outcomes. That gap is the headline statistic of FreshPaint's 2026 State of Healthcare Marketing report. It's also the wrong place to start the conversation. The harder question isn't whether healthcare marketers can close the attribution gap. It's whether the attribution model the industry has been chasing was ever the right tool for the business healthcare is actually in. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith open the episode with the two structural issues hiding behind the 91/1 paradox, then sit down with Ray Mina, the new CEO of FreshPaint, to walk through the report and what FreshPaint sees across hundreds of health systems managing roughly $2 billion in ad spend. Chris and Reed examine: Why the referring physician is the biggest specialty care channel that no attribution model can see The brand window mismatch, why work that compounds over 18 months keeps getting measured in a 30-day window How the 95:5 reality (most patients aren't in-market this week) breaks the assumptions performance dashboards are built on How attribution model choice (last-click, first-touch, linear, data-driven) quietly decides which work gets credit, and why most teams never make the choice on purpose The CFO shadow attribution problem, why marketing's ROI numbers and finance's numbers align only 54% of the time, and what happens in the 46% Ray's interview lands the practitioner perspective. The 2026 report puts data behind what most marketing leaders are feeling, the era of good enough is over, the Google trap is real and quantifiable, the four-tier maturity spectrum has only 1 to 3% of organizations operating at the top. Ray is honest that getting there is a significant investment, and that the tools have caught up in a way they hadn't three years ago. The conversation gets specific about what's now achievable, what isn't, and what the path looks like for organizations that don't have a Clint Paul or a Blair Premis to lead the work. If your attribution dashboard tells you brand isn't working, check which model you're running before you cut the budget. The answer the dashboard gives depends on the question the model was built to answer. Mentions from the Show: FreshPaint 2026 State of Healthcare Marketing report: https://www.freshpaint.io/state-of-healthcare-marketing Ray Mina on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymina/ FreshPaint: https://www.freshpaint.io/ Marketing Rounds podcast (FreshPaint, on YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/@freshpaintio/podcasts Binet & Field, "The Long and the Short of It," IPA: https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/effectiveness-research-analysis/les-binet-peter-field John Dawes / Ehrenberg-Bass on the 95:5 rule: https://marketingscience.info/news-and-insights/prof-byron-sharp-skewers-binet-tells-marketers-to-sack-agencies-preaching-share-of-voice Forrest et al., "Dropping the Baton: Specialty Referrals in the United States" (PMC): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3160594/ Improvado Healthcare Marketing Strategy Guide 2026: https://improvado.io/blog/healthcare-marketing-strategy-complete-2026-guide ABA Advertising, "Why Attribution Models in Healthcare Fail," October 2025: https://abaadvertising.com/industry-insights/why-attribution-models-in-healthcare-fail-and-what-to-do-about-it/ Patient Daily on multi-touch attribution in healthcare, January 2026: https://patientdaily.com/stories/679604830-multi-touch-attribution-models-help-healthcare-marketers-improve-campaign-measurement McKinsey, "The CMO's Comeback," 2025: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-cmos-comeback-aligning-the-c-suite-to-drive-customer-centric-growth Duke CMO Survey, Fall 2025 (34th edition): https://cmosurvey.org/marketers-claim-a-broader-role-and-increased-influence-amid-pressures/ Uptempo CMO vs. CFO survey, 2025: https://www.uptempo.io/ebook/cmo-vs-cfo/ Michael Kaminsky (Recast), HBR, September...

Of 266 metro areas studied by the Health Care Cost Institute, using 1.3 billion medical claims, only seven have hospital markets that qualify as genuinely competitive. New York. Los Angeles. Chicago. Riverside. Philadelphia. Miami. Washington, D.C. Everywhere else, patients in most service lines are not shopping. They are arriving. And healthcare built a decade of digital strategy on the premise that they were choosing. That doesn't mean the premise was entirely wrong, and it doesn't mean the work was wasted. It means the consumerism frame that the industry borrowed from retail was always a partial fit, and the digital investments that had the most impact were often working for reasons the frame didn't quite describe. Insurance constrains patient options before anyone opens a browser. Crisis eliminates preference entirely. Specialist and complex care decisions follow referral patterns, not consumer shopping behavior. The "competitive market" that consumerism theory assumes exists reliably in about seven cities. The friction-reduction work, though, was real and its effects are measurable. In June 2019, 10% of Americans had ever had a telehealth visit. Today 54% have, and 89% report satisfaction with their most recent virtual care experience. A 2025 access-to-care study found that 23.3% of patients who experienced appointment scheduling friction said it led to worsened health, and more than half switched providers. That work didn't succeed by winning a competitive fight. It succeeded by removing barriers that had always been there. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith examine what the last decade of digital investment was actually accomplishing, where the consumerism frame helped and where it pointed the work in the wrong direction: Why healthcare "choice" was always constrained by insurance networks, referral patterns and market structure, before anyone built a digital front door What the friction-reduction work was actually doing, and why it had value the consumerism frame didn't fully explain Price transparency as the case study for what happens when the wrong frame drives the deliverable Why telehealth succeeded by removing access barriers rather than winning a consumer preference battle What complexity management looks like as a forward frame, and why it applies to patients, staff and referring physicians equally Price transparency is the sharpest example of the frame producing the wrong result. The CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule was built on a consumerism premise: give patients price data, they will shop, prices will fall. As of November 2024, only 21% of hospitals were fully compliant with all requirements. The GAO found the published data so difficult to use that most stakeholders relied on third-party vendors just to make it parseable. The rule produced compliance behavior aimed at regulators. It did not produce a consumer tool. The frame predicted the wrong outcome. If the work was never really about out-competing a rival health system, the question worth asking now is whether the experience built in most markets actually makes the complexity easier for the person who has no choice but to navigate it. Mentions from the Show: HCCI Health Cost Landscape, April 2026: https://healthcostinstitute.org/all-hcci-reports/what-is-the-health-cost-landscape/ AJMC / HCCI Healthy Marketplace Index: https://www.ajmc.com/view/nearly-75-of-us-hospital-markets-highly-concentrated-hcci-report-shows Axios Future of Health Care Newsletter, April 2026: https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-future-of-health-care-ee174520-3387-11f1-8096-e7d285bf9bf6.html Patient Rights Advocate, Seventh Semi-Annual Hospital Price Transparency Report, November 2024: https://www.paubox.com/blog/hospital-price-transparency-requirements-and-compliance-challenges GAO-25-106995, Health Care Transparency, October 2024: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-106995 Perficient Access to Care Research, 2025:...

Healthcare has been running AI pilots for three years. Most of them worked. Almost none of them scaled. That's not a coincidence, and it's not a technology problem. A pilot is designed to succeed under favorable conditions: dedicated staff, narrow scope, a vendor highly motivated to deliver, and leadership that approved the project and needs it to justify the decision. None of those conditions survive contact with the enterprise. The pilot didn't reveal whether the technology could scale. It revealed whether the technology could perform in a demonstration. The harder question — whether the organization itself is willing to change to support it — never gets formally asked. By the time the pilot ends, the window for asking it has usually closed. The results go into a deck. The deck gets presented once. The next pilot begins. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith examine what perpetual piloting actually costs health systems, and why the gap between "we piloted this" and "we run this" is where most healthcare transformation quietly ends: Why the conditions that make a pilot succeed are precisely what makes it an unreliable predictor of enterprise viability How piloting became a way to signal innovation without requiring organizational change Why the decision to pilot and the decision to scale are different decisions — and why most organizations only make the first one What the one healthcare AI use case that has actually graduated pilots has in common with successful enterprise deployments in other industries What it looks like to design a pilot you actually intend to graduate, starting before the pilot runs A new Kyndryl study found 76% of healthcare organizations report having more AI pilot programs than they can scale. Not more than they've scaled. More than they can scale. That number is not a technology indictment. It's an organizational one. The question for every health system running pilots right now isn't whether the technology worked. It did. The question is whether the organization is prepared to decide. Mentions from the Show: TP427: The Case for Failing Faster to Address Disruption: touchpoint.health Kyndryl Research, March 2026: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2026/03/08/bonus-features-march-8-2026-69-of-physicians-struggle-to-access-recent-records-from-outside-providers-76-of-healthcare-orgs-have-more-ai-pilot-programs-than-they-can-scale-plus/ Define Ventures C-Suite AI Survey via Healthcare Finance News, 2024: https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/payers-providers-increasing-investments-ai McKinsey, Reimagining Healthcare Service Operations in the Age of AI, 2024: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare/our-insights/reimagining-healthcare-industry-service-operations-in-the-age-of-ai Bain & Company / KLAS Research, Healthcare IT Investment: AI Moves from Pilot to Production, October 2025: https://www.bain.com/insights/healthcare-it-investment-ai-moves-from-pilot-to-production/ Reed Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reedtsmith/ Chris Boyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisboyer/ Chris Boyer website: http://www.christopherboyer.com/ Chris Boyer on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisboyer.bsky.social Reed Smith on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/reedsmith.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Health systems have spent decades building brand equity. Almost none of that investment touched the data layer that determines how AI represents them to patients who never reach the website. When an AI agent tells a patient that an urgent care is closed and it isn't, the brand absorbs the damage. The data that caused the failure lived in a system marketing didn't own, maintained by a team that didn't know data accuracy was a brand function. That gap isn't a communication problem between marketing and IT. It's a structural one: nobody assigned it. The shift that makes this urgent isn't AI in the abstract. It's the move from owned channels to intermediary channels. Healthcare built its brand infrastructure to control what patients see on the website, in the portal, in the ad. When AI becomes the intermediary, the brand is only as strong as the data AI is reading. Emotional resonance, institutional reputation, patient experience scores: none of that translates to machine-readable signals. The data either says what it needs to say, or it doesn't. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith frame the investment paradox before bringing in their guest: Why healthcare brand strategy has a structural blind spot and where the money actually goes What the lifecycle of a data accuracy failure looks like inside a health system, from the physician directory to the patient complaint Why data accuracy is a brand investment decision, not an IT readiness decision The three accountability layers most health systems haven't assigned: operational, structural and strategic Why the urgency is new even if the underlying problem isn't Martha Van Berkel, CEO and co-founder of Schema App, joins to provide the mechanism. She draws the line between schema markup as a page-level tactic and schema markup as trust infrastructure: the data layer that lets organizations control how AI represents them rather than waiting to see what AI infers. She also distinguishes data readiness from human readiness, two separate organizational problems that healthcare is conflating, and offers a practical starting point for CMOs who are looking at this for the first time. If your brand strategy doesn't include a data accuracy component, you've built something worth protecting on a foundation you haven't checked. Mentions from the Show: Martha Van Berkel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martha-van-berkel Schema App: https://www.schemaapp.com Reed Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reedtsmith/ Chris Boyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisboyer/ Chris Boyer website: http://www.christopherboyer.com/ Chris Boyer on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisboyer.bsky.social Reed Smith on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/reedsmith.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

User-centered design has one quiet flaw: it assumes a single user. Healthcare has spent 15 years learning to center the patient. Journey maps, empathy research, consumer insight — the infrastructure for understanding the person receiving care is real and growing. What healthcare hasn't built is any equivalent accountability for the people expected to deliver that experience. The scheduler fielding calls a campaign generated. The service line director whose workflow just changed. The clinical staff asked to execute a new pathway on top of everything else they're already carrying. They aren't in the brief. They aren't in the journey map. And when the initiative falls apart at rollout, nobody calls it a design failure. They call it a change management problem. They say staff were resistant. They say operations didn't prioritize it. What they don't say: those people were never treated as users. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith examine why the internal user experience of a healthcare initiative is structurally unmeasured, organizationally unowned, and almost always addressed too late: Why patient experience has infrastructure behind it (scores, research budgets, dedicated roles) and the internal user has almost none How speed-to-launch pressure and diffuse rework costs produce a decision that looks rational and produces predictable failure The measurement gap: what gets measured gets designed for, and nobody is measuring whether the service line director's needs were addressed Why the seam between marketing and operations is unmeasured and why unmeasured seams don't get fixed How accumulated distrust compounds over initiatives and why "we've always done it this way" is often less about habit than about what the process has taught people to expect Steve Koch, co-founder of Cast and Hue, brings the frameworks: Jobs to Be Done and the four forces applied not to patients, but to the people who execute the work. His argument is the practical extension of the structural case - empathy interviews before the brief is built, not alignment meetings after the design is done. If your organization has patient experience leadership and no one whose job includes the internal user experience of your initiatives, you already know where things break. The question is whether you're willing to call it a design problem. Mentions from the Show: Prosci Best Practices in Change Management, 12th Edition https://www.prosci.com/blog/the-correlation-between-change-management-and-project-success Prosci / Stakeholder Inclusion Survey. https://www.prosci.com/blog/how-to-use-a-stakeholder-engagement-plan-sep StatPearls / NCBI Bookshelf — Change Management in Health Care https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459380/ Cast and Hue — https://www.castandhue.com Steve Koch on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevepkoch/ Reed Smith on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/reedtsmith/ Chris Boyer on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisboyer/ Chris Boyer on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/chrisboyer.bsky.social Reed Smith on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/reedsmith.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Running sprints inside an organization that hasn't changed anything else isn't transformation. It's double the work. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith examine what isolated Agile adoption actually produces in health systems — and what it exposes about the organizational infrastructure no methodology can fix on its own. Mentions from the Show: Only 23% of Agile-experienced executives say their org can shift resources quickly; only 34% say culture naturally enables Agile: Bain & Company, "How Agile Is Powering Healthcare Innovation" — https://www.bain.com/insights/how-agile-is-powering-healthcare-innovation/ Siloed structures as primary barrier to Agile at scale in large enterprises: Agility at Scale research review, 2025 — https://agility-at-scale.com/implementing/transformation-leadership/ 55% of organizations cite poor leadership as top barrier to cross-functional OKR alignment (prerequisite for Agile): Hyperdrive Agile OKR research, 2024 — https://hyperdriveagile.com/articles/breaking-silos-how-advanced-okr-cross-functional-performance-drives-unprecedented-growth-83 CEO "follow me, I'm just behind you" case study — management stuck in old-fashioned way while development teams ran Agile: Bain & Company, "Agile Innovation" — https://www.bain.com/insights/agile-innovation/ Healthcare structural and cultural barriers to Agile implementation: Rahman et al., SSRN, August 2024 — https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5041524 Real Agile blockers: decisions, load, trust, habits — finance and HR structural changes required: Bee'z Consulting / Scrum Alliance, 2025 — https://www.beez-consulting.com/blog/adopting-an-agile-culture-and-practices-in-healthcare-challenges-and-solutions Agile at scale requires finance, HR, and governance to shift — not just team-level training: Scrum Alliance, Coaching for Transformation microcredential framework — https://www.scrumalliance.org/microcredentials/coaching-for-transformation-sustaining-change Reed Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reedtsmith/ Chris Boyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisboyer/ Chris Boyer website: http://www.christopherboyer.com/ Chris Boyer on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisboyer.bsky.social Reed Smith on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/reedsmith.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The language of lifecycle engagement, continuous care relationships, and whole-person experience has fully colonized healthcare strategy decks. Marketing invested in journey maps. Leadership signed off on CRM platforms and digital front door initiatives. The consumer lifecycle is drawn on whiteboards in conference rooms across the country. And yet: the scheduling system still fills slots, not relationships. The EMR still closes the encounter at discharge. The call center still routes to availability, not context. The follow-up that fires after a visit is an automated survey, not a clinical touchpoint. The patient who received a personalized "we care about your whole health" email walks into an appointment where the provider has never seen it. Healthcare has rebranded the patient journey. It hasn't redesigned the organization that delivers it. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith examine the specific gap between what health systems promise through their consumer experience strategy and what patients actually encounter when the operational infrastructure hasn't changed: Why "consumer journey" became a marketing framework rather than an operational commitment — and what got left out when it did The post-discharge cliff: why most health systems treat discharge as an endpoint when a journey framework requires it to be a transition How scheduling logic, EMR workflows, and call center scripts were built for encounter resolution — not relationship continuity The channel handoff failure: why patients who begin digitally often restart from zero when they call or show up Who actually owns the seam between departments — and why the honest answer is usually nobody The episode ends with a direct challenge: before your organization launches its next lifecycle campaign or publishes its next patient journey map, someone should be able to answer a basic question. What is the operational commitment behind this? Not the technology investment. The operational commitment. If your CEO asked you today to show them where in the organization the consumer journey is operationally owned, could you give a straight answer? Mentions from the Show: "Value-based care adoption grows, but challenges remain": https://www.hfma.org/reference/value-based-care-adoption-challenges/ "Innovation in Pursuit of Patient-Centered Care": https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.24.0245 "Reducing Hospital Readmissions": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK606114/ "Reducing readmission rates through a discharge follow-up service": https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6616175/ "What is Healthcare CRM?": https://www.leadsquared.com/industries/healthcare/what-is-healthcare-crm/ "The continued growth of VBC, in 4 charts": https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2025/06/04/vbc "Engaging Complex Health System Boards in Quality and Safety Governance": https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.25.0276 Reed Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reedtsmith/ Chris Boyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisboyer/ Chris Boyer website: http://www.christopherboyer.com/ Chris Boyer on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisboyer.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Automation was sold as a way to scale good experiences. It scales bad ones just as efficiently. Healthcare has spent the last decade deploying chatbots, portals, AI-generated content, and personalization engines in the name of patient experience. The ROI case was built on efficiency: lower cost per interaction, faster throughput, reduced call center volume. What was never put on the balance sheet is what happens to patient trust when those systems fail — and they fail regularly, quietly, and without anyone in the organization knowing it happened. That's trust debt. Every time an automated system fails a patient and the patient absorbs the cost silently — closes the portal, hangs up, stops engaging — a withdrawal is made from an account most health systems never knew they had. It doesn't show up in satisfaction scores. It shows up in churn, in rising call volumes that automation was supposed to reduce, in patients who schedule once and don't come back. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith work through where the debt is accumulating right now — and where automation is actually doing the opposite: Why AI-generated health content optimized for fluency, not accuracy, is seeding doubt in the patients most likely to engage with it How portal adoption metrics are measuring the wrong signal — and why enrollment without satisfaction is just a larger audience for your frustration Where DXP personalization crosses from service into surveillance — and how thin consent frameworks are accelerating that perception What trust-building automation actually looks like, and what it has in common with the best human interactions in healthcare The three questions every team should ask before the next automated touchpoint goes live The research is catching up to what practitioners already sense. AI safety disclaimers in patient-facing responses dropped from 26% in 2022 to under 1% in 2025. Sixty-one percent of patients say they'd consider switching providers over a better digital experience. And the 2025 Edelman Trust and Health report found that no institution — not business, not government, not NGOs — is trusted to address patient needs. Healthcare is operating in a trust deficit it didn't create alone, but automation is making it worse in ways that are largely invisible to the organizations doing it. The question isn't whether to automate. It's whether you've been honest about what you're actually scaling. Mentions from the Show: TP456: When AI Speaks for the Patient — touchpoint.health TP460: When Digital Speaks for the Patient — touchpoint.health TP470: When AI Becomes the First Stop for Care — touchpoint.health AI errors in healthcare — Healthcare Brew, August 2025: https://www.healthcare-brew.com/stories/2025/08/20/healthcare-execs-ai-errors Declining medical safety messaging in AI — npj Digital Medicine, October 2025: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-025-01943-1 ECRI Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns 2025: https://www.medtechdive.com/news/ecri-patient-safety-report-2025-ai/742114/ ONC Patient Portal Access Data Brief 2024: https://healthit.gov/data/data-briefs/individuals-access-and-use-patient-portals-and-smartphone-health-apps-2024/ Experian Health patient portal switching stat: https://www.experian.com/healthcare/solutions/patient-engagement-solutions 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer: Trust and Health: https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer/special-report-health 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer: https://www.edelman.com/trust/2026/trust-barometer Reed Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reedtsmith/ Chris Boyer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisboyer/ Chris Boyer website: http://www.christopherboyer.com/ Chris Boyer on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/chrisboyer.bsky.social Reed Smith on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/reedsmith.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Health systems have spent 20 years optimizing for the patient who searches, clicks, and reads. They are not optimizing for the agent that queries, evaluates, and routes. Those are two different audiences — and most organizations are only ready for one of them. The digital front door was built on a human assumption: that discovery begins with a search, passes through a website, and ends in conversion. Agentic AI doesn't use doors. It uses structured pathways, machine-readable attributes, and decision logic that operates entirely outside your owned channel. The routing is already happening. The question is whether health systems are in the decision set - or invisible to it. The infrastructure making this possible isn't speculative. Model Context Protocol (MCP), now an open standard backed by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind, defines how AI agents connect to external tools and data sources. NLWeb, launched by Microsoft in May 2025, turns websites into machine-queryable endpoints. Together, they create an execution layer on top of your digital ecosystem. And most hospital websites aren't built to be legible to it. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith work through what this shift actually requires: Why the patient journey now runs conversation → AI interpretation → machine routing → conversion — and health systems control only the last step What breaks when machines encounter unstructured provider bios, inconsistent service line naming, and scheduling availability gaps Why brand strength built on emotional resonance doesn't translate to machine-readable signals — and what does The gap between "78% of health systems engaged in AI projects" and the 52% that feel operationally ready to implement them What a practical machine readiness audit looks like, and who inside the organization should own it The organizational problem is as hard as the technical one. Marketing owns content but rarely owns schema. IT owns infrastructure but rarely thinks in terms of machine-readable patient experience. Someone has to own machine readiness as a cross-functional problem. Right now, almost no one does. If your digital strategy was designed for the patient who searches, clicks, and reads - it was not designed for the agent that queries, evaluates, and routes. Mentions From the Show: Dean Browell on LinkedIn Danny Fell on LinkedIn Reed Smith on LinkedIn Chris Boyer on LinkedIn Chris Boyer website Chris Boyer on BlueSky Reed Smith on BlueSky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Artificial intelligence is being framed as innovation. But sometimes it sounds a lot like cost cutting. In this episode of Touch Point, hosts Chris Boyer and Reed Smith tackle a provocative question sparked by recent headlines describing workforce reductions as “AI productivity savings.” If thousands of jobs are eliminated under the banner of efficiency, is that transformation — or just margin management with better branding? Healthcare is under pressure to do more with less. AI is now embedded in marketing, access, scheduling, operations, and content workflows. But how are we actually measuring success? Is it: Revenue growth? Cost efficiency? Improved patient experience? Or simply labor reduction? Chris and Reed introduce a balanced AI value framework built around four dimensions: growth impact, cost efficiency, experience enhancement, and trust durability. Because in healthcare, productivity alone is not strategy — and cost savings without context can distort behavior. Then, they welcome guest experts Danny Fell and Dean Browell for a deeper executive-level discussion on how to position AI initiatives to the C-suite. How do you communicate long-term brand and trust value in a boardroom that applauds immediate cost reductions? And how do you avoid what they call “productivity theater” in the AI era? This episode challenges healthcare leaders to rethink ROI before AI reshapes the definition of value itself. Mentions From the Show: Dean Browell on LinkedIn Danny Fell on LinkedIn Reed Smith on LinkedIn Chris Boyer on LinkedIn Chris Boyer website Chris Boyer on BlueSky Reed Smith on BlueSky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Healthcare marketers are seeing something strange: campaigns look like they’re working, but analytics can’t explain why. In this episode, Chris Boyer and Reed Smith unpack what’s really happening inside healthcare’s “dark funnel” — the growing share of patient decision-making that happens outside trackable channels. Patients are increasingly influenced by AI summaries, private communities, reputation signals, and access realities long before they ever visit a website. By the time someone schedules care, the decision has already been shaped — just not in places marketing dashboards can see. This conversation explores: What the dark funnel actually is and why it’s accelerating in healthcare How AI tools are reshaping discovery before patients ever search Why reputation now acts as a signal of future loyalty, not just a score Where attribution breaks down — and why that doesn’t mean marketing is failing How health systems can influence decisions they’ll never directly measure If patient intent is forming off the radar, the real question isn’t how to track it — it’s how to stay relevant when your brand is being inferred instead of discovered. Mentions From the Show: Reed Smith on LinkedIn Chris Boyer on LinkedIn Chris Boyer website Chris Boyer on BlueSky Reed Smith on BlueSky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Healthcare talks a lot about growth, access, and consumerism. But there’s a growing problem hiding in plain sight: demand is getting easier to create, while supply remains stubbornly hard to deliver. In this episode, Chris Boyer and Reed Smith unpack a tension many health systems are feeling but rarely name out loud. As digital marketing, online scheduling, and consumer-first strategies mature, organizations are getting better at generating demand. Too often, that demand runs headfirst into real constraints on the supply side: provider schedules, clinic capacity, access center workflows, EMR logic, bylaws, and reimbursement realities. The result? Campaigns that work. Experiences that break. And patients who did everything right, only to be told there are no appointments available. The conversation starts with a quick reset on classic supply-and-demand economics and why those models fall apart in healthcare. From there, Chris and Reed explore: Why marketing is being asked to drive demand without influence over supply How digital tools are exposing access gaps that have always existed The disconnect between growth strategy, clinical operations, and access management Why “no appointments available” may be the most expensive UX pattern in healthcare What a route-first approach to access could look like in practice This is not about blaming clinicians or oversimplifying a complex system. It’s about naming the mismatch, understanding the incentives, and starting a more honest conversation about how demand and supply actually meet inside modern health systems. If healthcare is serious about consumerism, it has to get serious about access. Mentions From the Show: Reed Smith on LinkedIn Chris Boyer on LinkedIn Chris Boyer website Chris Boyer on BlueSky Reed Smith on BlueSky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trust in institutions is declining, and healthcare is not immune. At the same time, patients are relying more heavily than ever on what other people say online to decide where, when, and whether to seek care. In this episode of Touch Point, hosts Chris Boyer and Reed Smith revisit reputation management with a fresh lens. Not as a checklist of review sites to monitor, but as a leading indicator of patient trust, experience, and long-term loyalty. The conversation explores how reputation is shifting beyond Google and Facebook into places health systems rarely control or even monitor. From Reddit threads and local forums to unsolicited patient stories that carry more weight than polished testimonials, reputation today is fragmented, emotional, and deeply contextual. Chris and Reed also unpack a growing tension in healthcare marketing and patient experience. As more organizations are encouraged to solicit reviews through formal programs, are we improving transparency or simply priming the pump. And how should teams interpret star ratings versus narrative feedback when trying to understand real service breakdowns and recovery opportunities. Key topics include: Why declining trust makes reputation a strategic asset, not a marketing afterthought The difference between solicited and unsolicited reviews and why it matters How online reputation signals future loyalty and patient experience scores Where reputation actually forms today and why traditional monitoring tools fall short How health systems can move from reactive review management to meaningful insight and action This episode is a practical, opinionated update for anyone responsible for brand, experience, access, or digital strategy in healthcare. Reputation is no longer just about what people say. It is about what organizations choose to hear and how they respond. Mentions From the Show: Edelman Trust Barometer Reed Smith on LinkedIn Chris Boyer on LinkedIn Chris Boyer website Chris Boyer on BlueSky Reed Smith on BlueSky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Access is still one of healthcare’s most talked-about problems. But a year after our last access-focused episode, the conversation has shifted in quieter and more consequential ways. In this episode, Chris Boyer and Reed Smith revisit access not as a single front door problem, but as a routing challenge shaped by workforce constraints, digital behavior, reimbursement realities, and patient expectations that continue to evolve. Rather than rehashing familiar headlines about staffing shortages or online scheduling, they introduce a route-first access strategy. One that prioritizes guiding patients to the right care, at the right time, through the right channel. Sometimes that means digital. Sometimes it does not. The conversation covers what has actually changed over the past year, where health systems are making progress, and where access friction has simply moved instead of disappearing. Chris and Reed also explore how consumer expectations are colliding with clinical capacity, why access success increasingly depends on orchestration rather than availability, and what leaders should stop measuring if they want real improvement. This is a practical, forward-looking discussion for healthcare leaders who want to move beyond access theater and design experiences that work in the real world. Mentions From the Show: Fierce Healthcare 2026 outlook on hybrid care Gartner Strategic Predictions for 2026 Zocdoc 2024 What Patients Want report Reed Smith on LinkedIn Chris Boyer on LinkedIn Chris Boyer website Chris Boyer on BlueSky Reed Smith on BlueSky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For years, healthcare has talked about patients as informed consumers. Now, many of them are showing up informed before they ever touch a health system. In this episode of Touch Point, hosts Chris Boyer and Reed Smith unpack what’s behind OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT Health and why it signals a meaningful shift in how people seek, process, and act on health information. The conversation starts with a look at new research from OpenAI that shows how millions of people are already using ChatGPT for healthcare related questions. Not hypotheticals. Real behavior. Real scale. From understanding lab results to navigating insurance, AI has quietly become a first stop in the health journey. From there, Chris and Reed break down what ChatGPT Health actually does, what it does not do, and why that distinction matters for health systems, marketers, and experience leaders. They explore how AI is filling gaps created by short appointments, fragmented records, and limited access, and what that means for trust, preparation, and patient expectations moving forward. They then feature an interview with Brandon Scott, Chief Innovation and Growth Officer of TenAdams, that grounds the discussion in reality, examining where AI genuinely helps patients, where it creates new tensions, and why slow moving, walled garden thinking is increasingly out of step with how people now manage their health. This is not an episode about replacing clinicians. It is about understanding a new layer of the patient experience that already exists and deciding how healthcare organizations respond to it. If your digital strategy still assumes the website is the first interaction, or that education starts after the visit, this episode will challenge that assumption. Mentions From the Show: OpenAI — AI as a Healthcare Ally (Jan 2026) OpenAI — Introducing ChatGPT Health ChatGPT Health launches to serve “hundreds of millions” seeking health and wellness guidance each week Anthropic joins OpenAI's push into health care with new Claude tools Brandon Scott on LinkedIn TenAdams.com Reed Smith on LinkedIn Chris Boyer on LinkedIn Chris Boyer website Chris Boyer on BlueSky Reed Smith on BlueSky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As healthcare heads into 2026, the signals are getting harder to ignore. Financial pressure is mounting. Consumer expectations are accelerating. And digital strategies that once felt optional are now core infrastructure. In this episode, hosts Chris Boyer and Reed Smith kick off the new year with a trend-focused conversation unpacking what is actually changing across healthcare, digital strategy, and consumer behavior and what that means for health systems of all shapes and sizes. The discussion spans three critical areas. First, how hospitals, health systems, and academic medical centers are navigating margin pressure, workforce challenges, and increasing scrutiny while being asked to do more with less. Second, how digital and marketing strategies are evolving from campaign-driven efforts into intelligence and experience infrastructure powered by data, AI, and governance. And third, how patient expectations are shifting as consumers bring behaviors learned from retail, banking, and technology into healthcare. Rather than predictions for prediction’s sake, this episode focuses on real signals already shaping 2026 and the strategic implications leaders need to understand now. From hybrid care and digital access to AI-enabled personalization and experience design, this conversation is about where healthcare is heading and how prepared organizations truly are. Whether you work in marketing, digital experience, strategy, or executive leadership, this episode offers a grounded look at what is changing, what is breaking, and where health systems need to adapt next. Mentions From the Show: Chartis: From reactive to proactive: Health systems look to AI and digital to flip the healthcare delivery paradigm within 5 years Fierce Healthcare: 2026 Outlook: Hybrid care companies poised for growth driven by economic, policy tailwinds Gartner: AI’s Influence Runs Deeper Than You Think — 2026 Gartner Strategic Predictions Explain Why Paul Keckley website HealthGrades: Special Report: Seven Hospital Marketing Trends You Should Know in 2026 KLAS: AI being used more often at point of care, KLAS research shows Salesforce: The Ninth Edition State of Marketing Report Telus Digital: Six healthcare trends reshaping digital care in 2025 with expert insights on AI, ops, mobile and more The Economist: The truth about affordability Reed Smith on LinkedIn Chris Boyer on LinkedIn Chris Boyer website Chris Boyer on BlueSky Reed Smith on BlueSky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every year, they pause to look back at what resonated most with the Touch Point community. In our 2025 Touch Point Podcast Listener Choice Awards show, hosts Chris Boyer and Reed Smith share a behind-the-scenes look at how the show performed this year and what listeners told us matters most. They break down where the show;s audience is tuning in from, including top cities, states, and countries. They also share download trends across the year and highlights from Spotify Wrapped that show how Touch Point is performing inside the Spotify ecosystem. Lastly, they also dig into the results of our annual listener survey, covering what topics resonated, how people are using the podcast in their work, and what they want more of in the year ahead. And of course, they close with the awards. Best Episode of the Year goes to TP421 – The Evolution of Patient Experience, a conversation that traced how experience has shifted from satisfaction scores to a broader human and digital lens. Best Guest Interview of the Year goes to John Berndt of Valtech, recognized for a conversation that challenged how healthcare organizations think about digital trust, experience, and transformation. Think of this episode as a year-in-review, a thank you to our listeners, and a preview of where Touch Point is heading next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In case you missed it, this episode tackles one of the biggest shifts quietly reshaping healthcare marketing: search is no longer about winning keywords. It is about understanding intent, context, and how AI now mediates discovery. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith revisit a timely conversation on how generative AI is changing the rules of SEO and why many traditional optimization tactics no longer hold up. As search results become AI-assembled experiences rather than ranked lists, health systems are being forced to rethink how they create, structure, and distribute content. This ICYMI episode explores why SEO now looks less like a checklist and more like a precision sport, where strategy, patience, and adaptability matter more than brute force tactics. Thought leader Carrie Liken joins the conversation to unpack what Google’s generative search future means for healthcare organizations, including the rise of zero-click discovery, the collapse of keyword-first strategies, and how hospitals can stay visible when AI becomes the first interaction layer. If your SEO playbook still assumes users are clicking blue links, this is one worth revisiting. Mentions From the Show: How AI is reshaping SEO: Challenges, opportunities, and brand strategies for 2025 Search Engine Land Search trends for 2025: Is a new ecosystem emerging? 2025 trend: Generative search will become the new normal, shaking up ad spend How to navigate the changing landscape of search in 2025 AI-driven search ad spending set to surge to $26 billion by 2029, data shows Carrie Liken on LinkedIn Carrie Liken on SubStack Reed Smith on LinkedIn Chris Boyer on LinkedIn Chris Boyer website Chris Boyer on BlueSky Reed Smith on BlueSky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are back with the second half of our annual Holiday Sampler, featuring the remaining three episodes that round out Touch Point’s most downloaded shows of 2025. These are the conversations listeners kept coming back to. The ones that sparked follow-up questions, internal debates, and hallway conversations at conferences. Together, they reflect the themes that defined healthcare marketing and digital strategy this year, including privacy-first advertising, AI-driven content strategy, and a rethinking of reputation management beyond simple star ratings. In this episode, Reed Smith and Chris Boyer revisit three standout conversations that explore where digital transformation is actually working inside health systems, how AI is reshaping consumer expectations, and why trust and access remain the real competitive differentiators. As a reminder, the annual Touch Point listener survey is still open through December 19. This is your opportunity to vote for Best Guest and Best Interview of the Year. The race is close, and every vote matters. Consider this the second half of the sampler platter. Different flavors, big ideas, and still plenty of great choices on the table. Mentions From the Show: Episode 420 - The 2025 State of Digital Advertising for Healthcare TP423 – Healthcare Content in 2025: AI, Composability, and the Content Stack TP424 – Rethinking Reputation Management (Moving Beyond Google Reviews) 2025 Annual TouchPoint Listener Survey Reed Smith on LinkedIn Chris Boyer on LinkedIn Chris Boyer website Chris Boyer on BlueSky Reed Smith on BlueSky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Health care did not have a quiet year. AI, experience, platforms, and “vibe” all took turns in the spotlight. In this first half of our Holiday Sampler, hosts Chris Boyer and Reed Smith revisit four of the most downloaded Touch Point episodes of 2025. These clips capture the themes that kept listeners coming back. This episode features standout moments from: Episode 421: The Evolution of Patient Experience We look at how patient experience grew up. From the days of satisfaction surveys and HCAHPS to a broader, human centered view that includes families, communities, and digital expectations. This clip returns to the point where COVID, consumer behavior, and online access collided and forced health systems to rethink what experience really means. Episode 428: Breaking the Healthcare Content Mold AI quietly moved from pilot projects to everyday content work. In this segment, we revisit how health systems are using AI to draft education materials, website copy, social content, and SEO at scale, while staying compliant and avoiding PHI. The clip focuses on the human plus AI dynamic and why better prompts and guardrails lead to better outputs. Episode 431: AI, Are You Killing Our Vibe Vibe marketing became one of the buzz phrases of the year. Here we unpack what people actually mean when they talk about “vibe,” how it influences discovery and trust, and where AI fits in as a tool to shape and scale emotional connection. This highlight walks through concrete examples of how teams brought vibe into campaigns without losing substance. Episode 435: The Website Is Now a Platform In this conversation, we challenged the idea of the hospital website as a static brochure. The clip you will hear looks at what happens when you treat the site as a true platform for access, engagement, and growth. We talk about scheduling flows, self service tools, data capture, and the privacy and trust questions that come with a more intelligent experience. It is a snapshot of how digital front doors are becoming digital operating systems. Taken together, these four episodes show how quickly the ground is shifting under healthcare marketers and digital leaders. Experience is broader. Content is more automated. Brand is more emotional. The website is more operational. The leaders who follow these threads are already working differently heading into 2026. Our annual listener survey is open through December 19. It is your chance to vote for the best guest and best interview of the year and to tell us what you want more of in the year ahead. We will share the results and celebrate the winners in our final episode of 2025. Mentions From the Show: 2025 Annual TouchPoint Listener Survey Reed Smith on LinkedIn Chris Boyer on LinkedIn Chris Boyer website Chris Boyer on BlueSky Reed Smith on BlueSky Final note Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices