Sutter Health became the first health system to implement Epic's AI-powered patient chatbot in 2026, marking a shift in how large integrated delivery networks handle the digital front door. The deployment comes as healthcare systems face mounting pressure to reduce call center costs while meeting co

Healthcare marketers spent the pandemic era building acquisition strategies around Medicaid expansion and continuous enrollment protections that kept 94 million Americans insured. That foundation just cracked. New work requirements and accelerated eligibility checks threaten to strip coverage from 1

Healthcare systems pouring acquisition dollars into yesterday's growth markets are making a costly mistake. New census data shows Southeast metros dominating population migration patterns while national growth slows to historic lows, forcing an urgent recalibration of capital deployment, service lin

Stryker's restoration of manufacturing operations following a cyberattack signals more than operational recovery — it reveals a fundamental vulnerability in healthcare marketing's supply chain dependencies. When manufacturing halts, patient care suffers, physician trust erodes, and competitors gain

Healthcare marketers face a counterintuitive challenge in 2026: federal funding designed to save rural hospitals may require them to promote fewer services, not more. Montana received over $233 million in its first year of the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, but the state's applicat

Healthcare marketing leaders face a dual shock: global advertising growth worth nearly $100 billion hangs in the balance as energy constraints collide with web traffic that has fundamentally changed composition. Automated traffic now grows eight times faster than human traffic, rising 23.5% year-ove

The CVS-FTC settlement on insulin pricing marks a regulatory crossroads where enforcement meets market access—and healthcare marketers who miss the strategic shift will find themselves messaging to a landscape that no longer exists. When the Federal Trade Commission moves against pharmacy benefit ma

Healthcare marketing leaders face a new compliance reality: state attorneys general are no longer waiting for the Federal Trade Commission to police health-related advertising claims. Two states have filed lawsuits against a cord blood bank for false advertisements, marking an aggressive shift in ho

An $8 billion health system chose to walk back its rebrand and return to its original name—a move that signals the end of healthcare's uncritical embrace of corporate identity consolidation [1]. For marketing leaders who spent the past decade defending merger-driven rebrand budgets, this reversal re

The National Institutes of Health's pattern of grant terminations falls disproportionately on women and early-career scientists, according to recent research. For marketing leaders at academic medical centers and research hospitals, this isn't just a pipeline problem—it's a market repositioning impe