TP488: What If Marketing Owned Patient Activation?

Touch Point Podcast
Touch Point Podcast
TP488: What If Marketing Owned Patient Activation?
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86% of health system CMOs know patients are dropping off before completing care. 47% of organizations have nobody who owns getting them back. The growth opportunity everyone agrees on is the growth opportunity nobody is responsible for.

The Forum for Healthcare Strategists and Digital Health Strategies released a survey of 50 health system CMOs this month. 40% named the conversion of clinically eligible patients into completed care as the largest untapped source of profitable growth, twice the rate of the next answer. 2% of marketing departments allocate a budget majority to it. One respondent out of 49 said their department spends more on patient activation than acquisition. The C-suite is putting its growth chips elsewhere. 56% of senior leaders prioritize M&A, expansion and physician recruitment. 18% prioritize closing care gaps. 60% of healthcare marketing AI spend goes to writing copy. 6% goes to identifying patients who need care.

This week’s episode runs a thought experiment. What if marketing simply claimed the category. Not partial credit. Not co-ownership with clinical operations. The whole thing, identification through completed care. Chris Boyer and Reed Smith map the teams currently sharing the work, the asymmetric capability marketing brings to it, and the operational accountability marketing has to absorb to make the claim defensible.

  • The structural reason patient activation has no owner, and which teams are currently sharing the work without owning it
  • The asymmetric capability case for marketing claiming the category, and the strongest counter from population health
  • The Patient Access Collaborative’s parallel claim, and why marketing’s claim is structurally different
  • The 80/20 acquisition split as a starting point rather than a target, and the budget conversation the CFO actually wants to have
  • What marketing has to absorb to earn the claim, measurement at completed care, operational risk, and the CRM problem the function has carried for fifteen years
  • The 12 to 18 month window before someone else defines the category

The Patient Access Collaborative made the parallel claim in September 2025. Dr. Elizabeth Woodcock’s framing of access leaders as “the health system’s growth engine” is the closest competing assertion, and it’s already moving inside academic medical centers. The vendor landscape is telling on the org chart. Upfront, Health Catalyst, CipherHealth, Luma are selling into marketing and population health simultaneously. The market has figured out where this work lives. The org chart hasn’t caught up.

If the largest unclaimed growth category in healthcare is sitting on your desk and your function has the strongest unclaimed toolkit for it, the question isn’t whether you want it. It’s whether you’re willing to be measured on completed care.

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Reed Smith

VP @jarrardinc, Advisor @MayoClinic Social Media Network and @SXSW Health & MedTech. @SocialHealthIns and @tpmnetwork founder

Chris Boyer

Principal, @chrisboyer LLC  Using digital marketing, experience and UCD/CX to transform healthcare. Co-host of the touch point podcast and founder of the Touch Point Media network. 

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