Healthcare marketers keep running into the same puzzle. Campaigns seem to work. Appointments come in. The analytics can’t say why, because the decision was made somewhere the dashboard never sees.
This week’s Touch Point replays TP474, where Chris Boyer and Reed Smith named that blind spot the dark funnel. Patients now form their choices in AI summaries, private communities and reviews before they ever reach a health system website. By the time someone books, the hospital is confirming a decision it had no view of.
Nine months later the trend is easier to see. In a KFF poll fielded weeks after the episode aired, about a third of U.S. adults said they had used an AI chatbot for health information in the past year. Carrie Liken has since argued that the health system website is becoming a data layer that feeds those assistants, which means even fewer patients reach the page marketing can measure.
The episode’s harder point holds up best. Losing sight of a decision does not mean losing influence over it. Reputation and provider data still shape what patients hear about a health system, even when nobody can trace the path. The original episode treats broken attribution as a measurement problem to work around, and that reading has aged well.
If your brand is being described to patients in places you can’t see, who on your team is responsible for what gets said?
MENTIONS FROM THE SHOW
- Original episode: TP474, “Who Turned the Lights Off? The Dark Funnel of Healthcare,” February 11 2026: https://touchpoint.health/podcast/tp474-who-turned-the-lights-off-the-dark-funnel-of-healthcare/
- KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust, “Use of AI for Health Information and Advice,” published March 25 2026. 1,343 U.S. adults, fielded February 24 to March 2 2026. 32% used AI tools or chatbots for health information or advice in the past year. Among users, 41% named looking up information before seeing a provider as a major reason. 58% of physical health users later followed up with a doctor or other provider: https://www.kff.org/health-information-and-trust/poll-finding/kff-tracking-poll-on-health-information-and-trust-use-of-ai-for-health-information-and-advice/
- Carrie Liken, “Death to Destination Healthcare,” Substack, October 24 2026. Argues health system websites are becoming a data layer for outside AI assistants: https://carrieliken.substack.com/
- Carrie Liken on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrieliken/
- TP511, “Live from HCIC26: Who Let the Agents In?”, where Carrie’s post came up in the roundtable: https://touchpoint.health/podcast/tp511-live-from-hcic26-who-let-the-agents-in/
- TP476, “Good Enough for People Is Not Good Enough for Machines,” on making health system content readable to AI agents: https://touchpoint.health/podcast/tp476-good-enough-for-people-is-not-good-enough-for-machines/
- TP436, “The Patient Doesn’t Know They’re in a Funnel,” the earlier conversation on why the funnel model misreads how patients decide: https://touchpoint.health/podcast/tp436-the-patient-doesnt-know-theyre-in-a-funnel/
- 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
