As a practicing radiologist, I never expected healthcare marketing to become one of my primary areas of focus. Yet the more I think about patient access, the more difficult it becomes to separate the two.
Helping patients access care has always depended on helping patients find it.
When my co-founders and I started Luma eleven years ago, we were trying to solve a simple problem: patients needed care, providers had capacity, and the two often struggled to find each other. We viewed it as a matching problem.
Eleven years later, I believe healthcare is facing a new version of that same challenge.
The Matching Problem is Upstream
Health systems have invested heavily in patient access. Online scheduling, patient portals, contact centers, digital intake, and self-service tools have made it easier for patients to interact with healthcare organizations once they arrive.
But many patients begin shopping for care somewhere else.
They search Google for information about symptoms, conditions, and treatment options. They ask ChatGPT questions about their health concerns. As they move closer to seeking care, they may begin evaluating providers, locations, availability, and appointment options before they ever visit a health system website or call a scheduling team. The search bar and AI chats have quietly become the first front door to the health system.
Healthcare has spent years improving access after patients reach the health system. The next challenge is helping patients find available care in the first place.
Why Marketing Has Become Part of Patient Access
This change is why a physician like me has become so interested in healthcare marketing.
For years, I viewed patient access primarily through the lens of scheduling and care delivery. But we’ve discovered that patient discovery is part of the access challenge.
A health system may have open appointments. A newly hired physician may be building a patient panel. An orthopedics clinic might have capacity available this week. But if marketers can’t surface that availability to patients shopping for care, the same mismatch that concerned us eleven years ago can still occur.
I’ve seen versions of this challenge throughout my career. Patients are looking for care while providers have capacity available, yet the two still struggle to find each other.
Historically, chief marketing officers focused on brand and awareness campaigns to help patients learn that care existed.
Today, it has an opportunity to help patients discover where and when appointments are actually available.
That’s an important shift for health systems trying to grow service lines, support new physicians, and make better use of existing capacity. For years, healthcare marketing focused on promoting providers, specialties, and service lines. Today, it can play a more direct role in connecting the patient to real, bookable appointments.
Making Available Care Easier to Discover
Health systems now have opportunities to connect patient demand, provider availability, and scheduling in ways that were not possible when we started Luma more than a decade ago.
For decades, appointment availability largely lived inside scheduling systems. Patients could only see it after reaching the organization. That assumption is beginning to change.
Appointment availability no longer needs to remain buried inside scheduling systems. Health systems can make available care visible to patients while they are actively searching, helping connect patient demand with the providers that have capacity today, before patients turn elsewhere.
That shift has the potential to benefit everyone involved. Patients find care sooner. Providers fill schedules more effectively. And instead of slots expiring while patients go unseen and revenue is lost, health systems are gaining revenue and ultimately caring for more people.
At Luma, that belief has shaped much of our recent work. More importantly, it reflects the same problem we set out to solve from the beginning.
Patients need care. Providers have capacity. Healthcare works best when the two can find each other.
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