A Conference Hand-Crafted for You

The Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit (HMPS24) planning team has put together a star-studded program covering today’s top issues that will keep you educated, informed, and connected.

// By Jane Weber Brubaker //

When a health care conference sends out a call for speakers nine months in advance, you might wonder how current the sessions will be by the time the live event rolls around. That’s where the HMPS24 advisory committee — made up of industry leaders convened by conference producer Judy Neiman, president of the Forum for Healthcare Strategists — comes in, keeping things relevant.

Dean Browell, chief behavioral officer, Feedback

Advisory committee member Dean Browell, chief behavioral officer at Feedback, comments, “What’s really struck me the last couple of years being on the inside is how much of this is absolutely driven by what we’re hearing out in the field, the actual worries and anxieties and wants for education.”

Conference co-chairs Susan Alcorn, Kriss Barlow, Chris Boyer, and Terri Goren work hand in hand with the 28-member advisory committee, representing major health systems, including UChicago Medicine, Hackensack Meridian Health, Mount Sinai Health System, and many others to shape the content and ensure the conference sessions meet attendees’ most pressing needs for education today.

Here, we share some of the major themes and highlights of what you can expect at HMPS24, from timely and topical educational sessions to networking with your peers as well as the A-list senior leaders this conference attracts every year. Reconnect with your colleagues and make new friends at the Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit, held this year at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas from April 17-19.

Back by Popular Demand – Let’s Talk

“Candor is a complement; it implies equality,” Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan is quoted as saying. When C-suite leaders speak from the heart, unscripted, about the challenges they deal with, it’s worth your time to listen.

During these facilitated sessions designed to encourage open dialog, you can ask questions and interact with panelists — senior leaders from UNC Health, UCSF Health, RWJBarnabas Health, and others. You’ll hear about the challenges they face and how they manage them — and you may just walk away with the great new idea your organization needs.

Doing More Together: Partnerships

More than 60 concurrent sessions are organized into six content tracks. A strong theme running across all of them is the emergence of internal and external partnerships. Here are some of the new types of partnerships that you’ll hear about:

• Penn Medicine, Mass General Brigham, and MultiCare share how MarCom partners with IT on customer-focused transformation. (Wed. 10:15 a.m.)
• How MarCom and Nursing leaders at Mount Sinai join forces to strategize on recruitment and retention. (Fri. 10:45 a.m.)
• Physician Relations teams at Bon Secours work closely with Strategy and Marketing, focusing on primary care — the ultimate referral source. (Fri. 9:30 a.m.)
• Mass General Brigham and Orlando Health discuss how marketers and finance leaders come together to devise credible measures of marketing’s impact. (Wed. 3:15 p.m.)

Coming Together as an Enterprise

Governance is another major theme. It is related to partnerships — how organizations work across the enterprise to achieve common goals.

Speaking about provable return on investment (ROI), for example, Judy Neiman asks, “How are you working together to gather the right data, to interpret the data in a way that’s meaningful, and therefore prove accountability to the C-suite and demonstrate ROI?” (See “CFO Defensible ROI” – Wed. 3:15 p.m.)

An effective governance process helps organizations master a coordinated approach to patient engagement outreach. In “Expanding Engagement Strategies to the Enterprise” (Wed. 3:15 p.m.), you’ll hear how Stanford Health Care “established a governance structure stretching across many stakeholders, engaged teams from clinicians to contact center staff, and measured success.”

Applying AI

Last year’s hot topic was generative AI and large language models like ChatGPT. But AI touches many functions within health care organizations. Conference co-chair Chris Boyer says, “I would say more than 50 percent of the topics have some version of AI as part of them, but to support the strategies.”

In Boyer’s pre-conference session on Wednesday morning, “Harness the Power of AI,” health care executives from Providence and Hackensack Meridian Health will “define AI (not just generative AI) and discuss use cases in health care today, consumer/provider acceptance of AI solutions, benefits of AI adoption, risks of using AI in health care, and AI governance.”

Other AI-related sessions cover:

• How Mount Sinai evaluates AI tools and other innovations (Wed. 12:15 p.m.)
• How Cleveland Clinic uses generative-AI tools for content creation, SEO, website building, creative development, images, and ads (Wed. 12:15 p.m.)
• How to use generative AI to uncover insights in claims data (Wed. 1:30 p.m.)
• How Banner Health leverages advanced AI to drive “big revenue” (Thurs. 10:15 a.m.)
• A newly added keynote takes a deep dive into AI in health care and how it impacts marketing, communications, physician relations, and digital executives. The keynote features a Fireside Chat with Kaveh Safavi, MD, JD, managing director, Health Industry, Accenture; and Chris Boyer.

Learning from, and Responding to, Disrupters

Are disrupters a threat or an opportunity in disguise? Likely both, depending on the context. HMPS sessions discuss pros and cons, how disrupters could partner with health systems, and ways they already compete.

“We’re not just competing with the hospital across the street; there are a variety of new players in our market that we’re seeking to understand,” says conference co-chair Kriss Barlow.

• In “Transforming Healthcare: Leading the Way,” leaders from Geisinger and Hackensack Meridian Health share how they transform care delivery through retail strategies and with new partnerships and affiliations. (Wed. 1:30 p.m.)
• In “Outside Innovation: Lessons Learned,” leaders from Moffitt Cancer Center talk about how they use consumer research to understand disruption. (Thurs. 11:30 a.m.)
• Renown Health shares “how disruptor tactics, or partnerships, can improve access to primary care while also delivering net benefits for the health system.” (Wed. 10:15 a.m.)
• In “Market Disruption: Field Staff’s Role & Impact,” physician relations teams from HonorHealth and Virginia Mason Franciscan Health/CommonSpirit Health discuss how they respond to disruptions from nontraditional sources. (Wed. 1:30 p.m.)

This is just a sampling of what’s on the menu at HMPS24. Speaking of how quickly things change in the industry and the need to keep the content current, co-chair Susan Alcorn comments, “I would tell you that up until the day before, some things may change because that’s what’s important that particular day.”

Don’t miss out! What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But what happens at HMPS24, and whom you meet, can transform the future of health care.

Learn more about HMPS24 and register here: https://www.healthcarestrategy.com/summit/

Jane Weber Brubaker is executive editor of Plain-English Health Care, a division of Plain-English Media. She directs editorial content for eHealthcare Strategy & Trends and Strategic Health Care Marketing and is past chair of the eHealthcare Leadership Awards. Email her at jane@plainenglishmedia.com.