Digital Marketing Has Arrived (to Healthcare)

For the past few years, the annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in January has been been serving as the unofficial bellwether for the latest trends in the healthcare industry. The title of a January 27th podcast episode that I subscribe to, "HEALTHCARE IS HARD: A PODCAST FOR INSIDERS" caught my attention: The Biggest Surprise at JPM 2022 Is What Wasn’t Being Discussed: COVID (https://www.lrvhealth.com/podcast/?single_podcast=3024). Working in the healthcare industry for a company that provides software services to hospitals and healthcare systems, I too found this to be the case. Though we're caught in the midst of the Omicron wave, our customers seem to be picking back up more strategic conversations once again. According to the podcast, healthcare systems presenting at the conference agreed. "Digital transformation" was one term that kept being repeated throughout the conference. With telehealth being a trend that exploded during COVID, it appears that it is here to stay; before the pandemic less than 5% of all care was delivered via telemedicine but now is about 40-34% ("https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/telehealth-a-quarter-trillion-dollar-post-covid-19-reality"). With that, the approach for finding a doctor has dramatically shifted, and traditional hospital systems recognize a need to modernize their approach towards patient acqusition.  As the podcast episode noted, many hospitals are rebranding themselves from "healthcare systems" to "healthcare companies." The difference is that they are looking at people coming into the doors of their hospitals not as "patients" but as "customers." As part of this process, I see that hospitals are investing in all sorts of new technologies that are categorized as their "digital front door." This digital front door is intended to lower the barrier of entry for consumers to schedule appointments with new and existing providers. I am seeing healthcare companies elevate their VP of Marketing who are now driving forward a strategy that pushes consumers digitally to their companies' digital front door. As these hospitals build up the infrastructure to make it easier to enter their healthcare systems digitally, I expect that we'll see a doubling down in digital marketing spend as well.