A Strategic Look at What’s Driving CMkO Decision Making
Read our debrief of The Health Management Academy's Spring 2026 Chief Marketing Officer & Consumer Collaborative Forum. In our debrief, we shared what these executives discussed with their peers, including what marketing officers & consumer executives are working on right now.
Below are key takeaways from our in-person forum with Chief Marketing Officers and consumer leaders, offering insights on their top-of-mind issues
Key Themes Discussed
Structural authority as the prerequisite for consumer-centric integration: How scope without governance authority is a constraint, not a foundation — and how organizations that place marketing, access, and consumer experience under a unified incentive structure report a qualitatively stronger capacity to make and sustain decisions than those still relying on influence and coordination alone.
Consumer-facing AI governance lagging behind clinical AI governance, and the gap widening: How applying clinical-risk governance frameworks by default to marketing and communications work is slowing consumer AI adoption to a fraction of the pace clinical AI is moving at — and why change management, not technology, is the actual binding constraint executives are running into.
Access and brand as the same problem, not parallel workstreams: How access is the primary mechanism through which a brand promise is delivered or broken, not an operational metric sitting beside brand strategy — and how marketing leaders without influence over access, and access leaders who don't see themselves as brand stewards, are both missing the same opportunity.
The eroding nonprofit value narrative, and the case for getting ahead of it: How federal policy pressure and public scrutiny of margin-constrained spending are creating a reputational vulnerability reactive communications can't absorb — and why a quantified community-value narrative, built before the question is forced, is replacing storytelling-only advocacy.
AI search redefining brand real estate: How the shift from optimizing for search rank to ensuring AI tells an accurate, consistent story is widening the gap between where AI search is moving and where most health systems' content strategy currently sits — and why data consistency across press releases, reviews, and community boards is now foundational, not peripheral.
"AI is becoming the decision layer between your patient and you."
"If there is no access, we have broken our brand promise."
By the numbers: Only 27% of marketing leaders described having a unified consumer-centric strategy with shared goals and clear accountability. One system saw online scheduling for primary care climb from 39% to 72% of new patients following a brand refresh focused on access — with digitally engaged patients rating the organization twice as high on experience surveys, and scheduling integration alone tied to significant incremental revenue. Separately, one system's internal analysis found the nonprofit model delivers roughly twice the community value of a for-profit alternative.
Why This Matters for Industry
For industry partners, these conversations point to where CMkOs are actively looking for help and where they aren't yet organized to help themselves. Governance is the gating factor: a marketing technology or AI tool pitched into an organization still governing consumer-facing work through a clinical-risk lens will move slowly regardless of its capability, so framing that helps leaders separate those governance lanes — or that comes with a lighter-weight risk model built for marketing rather than clinical use — will land faster. The access-brand convergence also means solutions in scheduling, contact center, and consumer experience are now brand conversations, not just operational ones, giving vendors in that space a stronger case for CMkO-level engagement. And as AI search becomes the decision layer between patients and health systems, there's a clear opening for partners who can help organizations monitor and manage their presence across the full surface area AI systems synthesize — press, reviews, and community content — before measurement tools in that space mature and the gap becomes harder to close.