How to Grow Your Health System in 2025 | #SHSMD24 Insights

As the year draws to a close, it’s time to chart our plans for 2025 and look forward to what we can accomplish in the new year. If you’re working to drive growth for your healthcare business in 2025, here are our top three strategies garnered from this year's Society for Health Care Strategy and Market Development (SHSMD) Connections Conference:

1. A strong brand foundation is your greatest defense against disruptors
2. Personalization and video are must-haves for an engaging consumer experience
3. Your comparative advantage is your most direct path to strategic growth

Clarify: A strong brand foundation is your greatest defense against disruptors

As new players enter the scene, it will be even more important to strengthen your health system’s brand equity. Marketing your brand consistently, positioning yourself as the most trusted source for healthcare services and information, and highlighting your key differentiators will ensure your organization is seen as the clear and obvious choice for care—no matter who enters your market.

According to NRC, 95% of all purchase decisions are made subconsciously—though the point of decision comes long before making an appointment with a doctor. Once a potential patient and consumer first senses a problem with their health, at least 14% will begin researching the problem online. At that key moment of choice, you’ll want your healthcare organization to be top-of-mind and to be positioned as the “go-to” solution to provide the care they’ll need.

While the majority of consumers prefer care from a doctor’s office affiliated with their local hospital, access, convenience, and a consumer-friendly experience are factors that can sway their decision toward disruptors.

However, when appointment availability and distance from home are the same, a large percentage of consumers in each generational cohort has no preference about where they receive care. These segments presents a big opportunity for health systems to acquire prospective patients.

Though retail clinics are positioned to be convenient, on-the-go care, traditional health systems can win these undecided consumers by emphasizing their key differentiators of quality, expertise, and specialization.

Keys for driving growth:

• Investing in the strength of your brand will be crucial in a world where healthcare is becoming more commoditized and convenience often wins
• Take the time to understand consumer decision factors and how your differentiators set you apart from competitors
• Resist the urge to pull back on marketing when access to certain service lines is limited. Reallocate those funds toward driving general brand awareness, thought leadership, and promoting overall care quality, specialization, and expertise
  
  

Optimize: Personalization and video are must-haves for an engaging consumer experience

The digital landscape provides many opportunities to deepen connection and affinity with prospective patients and consumers. Big themes at #SHSMD24 to build that trust and affinity were personalization, video, and influencer marketing.

Personalization

As healthcare can be a very vulnerable and sensitive space with extremely high stakes, patients and consumers are actively seeking providers that prioritize convenience, offer self-service options, and tailor care to their personal needs:

• 74% of consumers demand online self-service opportunities managing prescriptions, claims, and appointments (EConsultancy)
• 77% of consumers are willing to change providers or go outside of plan network to find a better digital experience (ChangeHealthcare)
• 76% of consumers perceive outcomes are better when they feel more engaged in their care (McKinsey & Company)

Keynote speaker Roberta L. Schwartz, Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Houston Methodist, took that call to personalization seriously, “If you’re getting Netflix streamed, why should I not stream personal health content to you before, during, and after an appointment?”

Bottom line? We must strive to remove any barriers and friction to accessing care—elevating our tech, systems, and content to deliver a seamless, personalized experience at every touchpoint of care.

Video

Video is becoming one of the most powerful mediums for getting your message out. In fact, streaming video is the top daily media activity for Gen Z and roughly 94% of that generation streams video (eMarketer).

Social channels like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are also becoming primary search engines for many users–even for health information.

Engaging and educational video content from a trusted healthcare provider can be a great source of comfort for patients experiencing a problem with their health. Even more important is the opportunity to build a foundation of trust with that consumer before their health event occurs.

How to build a healthcare video strategy with high-ROI:

• Study the channels and study your audience
• Identify opportunities for relevance such as questions to answer and misinformation to debunk
• Tailor your existing content strategy to platform-specific trends such as hot takes, “let’s take a...”/POV, GRWM/day in the life, and ask an expert
• Highlight your providers’ expertise and humanize them with video content that takes the audience behind the scenes
• Build systems and—when needed—enlist outside agency support to ensure you can deliver high-quality, engaging, and educational video content consistently 

Influencer Marketing

Another hot topic at the conference was influencer marketing. Many health systems knew it was a valuable opportunity but were unsure of how to begin.

At Ten Adams, we’ve been very successful helping health systems connect more deeply with their audience and extend their reach and relevance through strategic brand partnerships with influencers. Check out our top tips for getting started here.

Keys for driving growth:

• Optimize your systems to provide personal touch through frequent, tailored communication, dynamic website content, care journey guides, and self-service functionality
• Leverage your existing content strategy to create videos that answer your audience’s most pressing questions, humanize your healthcare providers, and communicate your successes and expertise
• Explore influencer marketing as a way to reach new audiences, build credibility and trust, and connect to your ideal target audience on a deeper level

Grow: Your comparative advantage is your most direct path to strategic growth

A resounding theme throughout the conference was zeroing in on your health system's particular role in your marketplace and doubling down on what makes your health system unique. 

Knowing your comparative advantage will help you innovate strategically and choose growth strategies and investments that are both margin accretive and aligned to your vision.

How can you know your comparative advantage? It can be found at the intersection of these three things:

1. Your organization’s internal strengths (such as the infrastructure needed to consistently deliver strong outcomes)
2. Your external edge (services your competitors don’t provide as efficiently)
3. Reliability of return (services where you can consistently grow and maintain ROI without outsized additional investment)

For example, if your organization has an incredibly skilled OBGYN department but has traditionally focused more on obstetrics, labor, and delivery, expanding into menopause care–a market expected to surge to $22.7 billion by 2028–could be a great opportunity to leverage your comparative advantage to drive strategic business growth.

Keys for driving growth:

• Start first with a clear idea of why you want to grow and to what end. Strive to grow stronger rather than simply bigger
• Expand on what you do exceptionally well and partner up to fill your gaps. Find joint ventures, alliances, and strategic agency partnerships to bolster your weaknesses and help you stay focused on what you do best
• Know that some growth occurs from what we stop doing as much as from what we start doing. Practice principled pruning and remove projects, services, and processes that don’t fuel and strengthen your comparative advantage

Ready to chart your plan for growth?

If your health system needs help charging into 2025 with clear differentiation from your competitors, a robust strategy to meet + exceed consumer expectations, and a roadmap for increasing service line utilization + revenue for your healthcare business connect with our experts.

Sources:
Kirby, T., Hatt, R. (2024) Using the Power of a Strong Healthcare Brand to Minimize Disruption from New Competitors [PowerPoint slides],SHSMD Connections Conference.
Swanson, T., Aglubat, A. (2024) Unlock the Power of Personalization: 5 Steps to Building a Modern Content Supply Chain in Healthcare [PowerPoint slides],SHSMD Connections Conference.
Harris, C. (2024) Brandformance: Ignite Growth, Fortify Your Brand, and Accelerate Your Healthcare Marketing [PowerPoint slides],SHSMD Connections Conference.
Clancy, C., Folwer, C., Swope, R. (2024) Launching a Short-Form Video Strategy? Here’s How to Leverage Your Existing Strategy—and Internal Experts—for Success. [PowerPoint slides],SHSMD Connections Conference.
Herrington, J. (2024) How Will Health Systems Grow in 2025? [PowerPoint slides],SHSMD Connections Conference.
Kadlic, J., Dalton Rigsby, K. (2024) Mastering Patient Engagement [PowerPoint slides],SHSMD Connections Conference.

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