HMPS26 Recap

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are Marketing Happy, A Healthcare Marketing podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Bristow, and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I am very excited to have with me today our very own Marissa Gurrister. She is the Director of Growth here at Hedy & Hopp, and we are very excited because we just got home from HMPS in Salt Lake City, and it was a phenomenal conference.

We are huge fans of HMPS every year. It really brings something unique to the table. When you think about the entire ecosystem of healthcare marketing and strategy conferences, we are very honored to be there this year, to be able to see a lot of friendly, familiar faces. And so we wanted to hop on today and give a little bit of an over cap, overview, recap of some of our favorite sessions that we attended and help you just understand kind of the vibe of HMPS compared to the other sessions or the other conferences that happen in our space.

So if you have not yet been to HMPS, you can to get a better understanding of the kind of content that it offers. And think about if you want to add it to your agenda for next year. So first of all, Marissa, this was your first year at HMPS, right? So I love to hear your POV. Not necessarily comparing it directly to other conferences, but just conceptually help me understand kind of your thoughts walking away.

Marissa: Yeah. You know, I thought it was wonderful. It was so lovely. This is my first, conference of the year. So it was really energizing and refreshing to get back out and see familiar faces that we haven’t seen in a while. I think there was a really great energy about it. I think everyone was super excited to see what was coming out new for 2026 and what other folks are doing.

So it felt very collaborative and, just very like energetic folks were excited to be there and they were excited to learn and implement new strategies from other folks. So that was really fun, to be a part of that. 

Jenny: Yeah. Let’s talk about some of our favorite sessions. And, I’m going to actually pull up. I made some great notes about them.

So one of my favorite sessions was called the “CEO Communications Playbook.” And one of the cool differentiators about HMPS is they offer some sessions that are supposed to the content is not supposed to leave the room, so it really allows people the opportunity to have some vulnerability and perhaps talk about things either in their own professional careers or things happening within their own organizations that perhaps, you want to be comfortable sharing if it was being recorded and blasted out.

Right? So I’m not going to talk about the content that was shared, but more just kind of a nod to how well the speakers did. So it was moderated by Susan Alcorn. We love Susan. She’s a phenomenal moderator. Every time she’s moderating a panel, I know that it’s going to go super well. And then the three speakers were Jennifer Gilkey, from Dartmouth Health, Beth Toll from Saint Luke’s, and Charmaine Weis from Hospital Sisters Health System.

We’re huge fans of Charmaine. We love doing, we do a lot of work with and I absolutely love that group. I was really impressed with all three of the panel participants. They did a phenomenal job. Being able to share ways that they have worked with their CEOs, that allowed their CEOs to be more successful, allowed them to be more successful in the marketing leadership roles.

And they all had different POVs about how long they had worked with their CEOs, or if they had to manage multiple CEOs. So it was just a phenomenal session all around. 

Marissa: I went to, I did I agree, I went to that session. It was wonderful. And I really loved a lot of the conversation. Like you said, folks are so vulnerable and just coming to the table with issues, and it just felt very collaborative.

Like I mentioned before, I also attended, a session. It was, “AI in Action: Product Strategy Lessons.” And it had it was a panel discussion as well that was very collaborative. To like as a team as well. So everyone was chatting about new and innovative ways that they are using AI in their organizations to advance goals, both for marketing and strategy teams and just really creative ways.

And there was a lot of good back and forth. John Davey from Mount Sinai was on that panel, along with Travis Waters at Vanderbilt, right here in Nashville with me, and then Aaron Watkins with North Bay. I know we’ve talked to them quite a bit too, so that was fun. To just hear about all the fun, exciting ways that folks are using AI, within their marketing and their IT and digital teams.

Jenny: That was a great one. Another one that I really enjoyed was a session called “Promise to Practice: Aligning Brand and Patient Experience.” So that was Douwe Bergsma and Elizabeth Daugherty, at Piedmont. And they really just did a phenomenal job sharing their real-world experiences. And again, really strong case study content. We are big fans of Douwe and Elizabeth and both just phenomenal people and really generous with the information that they share to be able to help other marketers kind of learn from their experiences.

Marissa: And we know that he loves to listen to the podcast. So, Hi Douwe!

Jenny: Hi, Douwe! And that one was moderated by one of our good friends, Ryan Donahue. We are huge fans of Ryan. Ryan just welcomed a sweet baby into the world the week before the conference. So huge kudos to him for upholding his commitment and going to HMPS.

I’m sure his wife was very excited when he came home. 

Marissa: Oh my gosh. So funny. Yeah. I was thinking to you about the session. I attended one session. It was called “Governing Patient-Facing AI In a Post-Website World.” Again, another really interesting AI session. I think that it there was a lot of buzz about AI, and I think if you asked several folks, I saw LinkedIn posts after of everyone just saying, like, I was such a hot topic at conference this year.

But Brian Gresh with Community Health Network, hosted that session, and he had some really wonderful insights. I took a lot away from that session. They talked a lot about just kind of like how patients rely on AI and how health systems need to really show up and meet those patients where they are with their AI.

You know, it’s just really interesting. He shared a lot of great insights. 

Jenny: I will say I felt the general trend, as folks, we’re talking about AI was definitely more of a shift towards, of course, we’re doing this right. Like, of course we’re testing different implementations and it isn’t spitting out email copy for us. Right? That is a very junior low level way to think about AI.

But of course we’re strategically thinking about how to integrate it into our systems. Whereas a year ago at this time it was very much a how do you use ChatGPT prompting, right? Yeah. The jump in sophistication that we heard across the board, the way that people were talking about it was I was just very proud of everybody. Right.

Marissa: Main adoption. Yeah. So many more folks are adopting it and like embracing it and not so I feel like last, you know, a few conferences ago, it was more like a fearful thing, like less to do with all of this. And now they’re like excited and we’re leaning into it and it was exciting. 

Jenny: I completely agree. But I will say not a single person I talked to was afraid that I was going to take their jobs or have them reduce the headcount on their team.

It was very much more of a focus of efficiency process optimization. Just reducing those manual human tasks or improving efficiencies. So again, just very proud of everybody that was there and the way that they showed up talking about AI.

Marissa: I know it was wonderful. It was a great conference. I left just so excited. It was like I said, the energy was fun and everyone was just excited to I think, dig in deeper and keep moving forward. It was it was wonderful. 

Jenny: Yep. One other session that I wanted to mention was one called “Brand Frankenstein’s Co-branding Lessons from Joint Ventures and Affiliations.” Oh, everybody has had to deal with rebrands, joint brand affiliations, whose logo goes first, whose goes second. This was very well done. It was moderated by Christine Woolsey. We’re huge fans of Christine’s.

She’s up at Michigan Medicine, and then the three speakers were Rebecca Price from University of Michigan Medicine, Sarah Sanders from Baptist Health. She’s a phenomenal speaker. Always try to tune in to panels and presentations that Sarah does. And then David Simpkins with Rochester Regional Health, and they did a great job talking about not just the brand strategy behind logos, but also the emotional, if you’re thinking about, for example, you know, small rural locations, they may have a lot of emotional attachment to their brand and think that it holds a lot of weight and kind of talking about how they navigate those conversations through the physicians and legal and compliance and all of the different folks that participate in those conversations. 

It was very well done. And again, kind of similar to the CEO communications panel, where people were just so generous with experiences, and with case studies. So kudos to all of the people that participated in that session as well. 

Marissa: I love it, I love it, yeah, there’s so much. There is just so much to unpack and take away. And I was not I was not disappointed by any session. Every session I said it was wonderful. It was great.

Jenny: I completely agree. Our session, we had a super fun, present presenting with our dear friend, Amanda Bowie at Bayhealth. So we are in the middle of doing an Epic Cheers implementation with them. And so we did a, a session that was called Core Growth to oh my gosh, I’m forgetting the name of my actual “Core System to Measurable Growth.”

I just Frankensteined the the name of the session. And we did a little bit of a one on one at the beginning of, you know, what are the Epic marketing and analytics tools even called? So people could kind of level set an understanding of if we say Cheers, here’s what it means. And then we quickly jumped into a case study talking about the audit that we conducted for them, of what messages are currently being sent out to their patients, who is sending them, what is the content, how is it being engaged with?

And you know, what is the responses? We did a tech audit helping them understand, you know, how are they currently leveraging their Epic infrastructure compared to their peers? What are opportunities for tools that they perhaps already have subscriptions to that they could begin leveraging to improve the patient experience? And then we created a roadmap for them, a 24-month roadmap to really improve the sophistication, a way that they were engaging with patient experience and also driving patient volume.

Amanda is a phenomenal public speaker and she did such a good job. Yeah. Sharing all of this helpful information around how she is navigating the complex relationships within an organization for all of the stakeholders, because as with Epic, again, marketing usually is actually never the owner of Epic. And so you have to work with it. You have to work with IT.

Security. You have to work usually with population health, all of these different groups. So she did a really great job kind of opening up about her strategies, how she’s having it be a situation where everybody is winning. You know, everybody has success as part of this roadmap. And it was it was just phenomenal. 

Marissa: I think it was really relatable. I got a lot of feedback from folks on that session that it was just so relatable to hear her point of view from being in the system seat, where she was the kind of the one facilitating all of this that, yeah, she was phenomenal. But, I enjoyed listening into that session as well. 

Jenny: Yeah. I think sometimes when you start talking about marketing tech stacks, you can start feeling a little intimidated about what other people are doing and thinking that they all have it together and you don’t. So I do think Amanda’s vulnerability of saying, like, hey, here’s the areas where we’re literally starting from scratch, and here’s some areas that we’re doing good and here’s what we’re doing to move forward, really helped folks feel like, oh, okay.

I, you know, I can take a deep breath because I need to write more often than not, folks are actually there, even, you know, if it’s difficult to admit to their peers. So, definitely created some strong conversations in the hallways afterwards. So. And, one last thing that I wanted to give a shout out to is, I thought folks in the exhibit hall really showed up.

I was very impressed walking through this exhibit hall, compared to just a few years ago, everything was much more tactile and experiential. Like folks aren’t just doing a super boring backdrop with fliers anymore. We were in Salt Lake City, so one group actually had dirty sodas that they were doing. We had AHA Media did some really cute, you can make your own mini Lego person, and they had these little clear plastic frames that you could do to take it home with you.

It was just each booth had something unique and a cool way to engage with them, and I’m just very proud of all of the vendors of really finding a way to make it experiential and fun for folks on the system side, versus feeling like they’re just being bombarded with fliers whenever they walk in. So very good job. 

Marissa: There was so much it was very interactive. Modea did their like, leather branding, which I thought was so fun for Salt Lake. Oh, cool. Yeah, there’s a lot of really fun things. Yeah, very nice. 

Jenny: And then finally we want to give a huge, huge, huge shout out to Judy Newman. Judy once again. So Judy is just a powerhouse in the healthcare marketing and strategy conference space.

So Judy facilitated and set up, sets up this entire conference every year. And she does a phenomenal job selecting speakers and ensuring that the content is going to be as meaningful as possible. So huge shout out to Judy. Good job this one. This was a great one. Yes, yes, big, big round of applause to Judy. We are super fans of Judy and just very appreciative of everything that she does to allow all of us to be able to show up and create some meaningful conversations and deepen our relationships together in person this time of year.

Marissa: Yeah, and we’re looking forward to next year. 

Jenny: Yes, yes. So hopefully this recap was helpful. If you have any questions, or want to learn more about any of the sessions we mentioned, we’re going to be listing all of the LinkedIn profiles for the speakers. We’re going to be tagging all of them on LinkedIn. This community is extremely responsive and engaging with their peers.

So I want to encourage you. One of the biggest takeaways at conferences is usually connections with peers that you can stay in touch with year round. So if you’re having a problem, you have somebody that you can, you know, pick up the phone and shoot a quick text to and ask out if they’ve experienced something similar. So I really encourage you if you are, you know, on the system, on the provider side.

And we mentioned a session that you think is interesting, reach out to one of the speakers or panelists. I just know that all of them are so gracious with their time, you know, especially to their peers, and are always willing to, you know, foster and build those relationships. I love it. 

Marissa: Yeah, they will be. And, I would say just reach out. You never know, what sort of good feedback or insightful nuggets they’ll have for you. 

Jenny: Agree. So thank you so much for tuning in to this week’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. If this episode was helpful, please like and share it with a colleague that you think may find it valuable. And we hope to see you here again next week.

Have a great day! Cheers!