Top Quarterly SHSMD Resources
Most Accessed and Downloaded SHSMD Resources from Q2 2026
The resources members used most this quarter reveal a field adapting to a new discovery environment while facing familiar pressure to prove value. From AI visibility and marketing ROI to crisis readiness, stakeholder alignment and peer-tested execution, these are the ideas and tools SHSMD members turned to when the work demanded a clearer next move.
Generative Engine Optimization Checklist Members Only
The path to discovery is changing faster than most health systems' content operations. This practical checklist helps marketing and communications teams audit structured data, service line and provider content, internal linking and other signals that influence whether AI-powered search tools can understand, trust and accurately represent an organization.
What members read when the consequences went beyond the click
These top News Scan articles reflect three questions reshaping health care strategy: how organizations stay visible when AI mediates discovery, what marketing actually changes in patient behavior and what patients need before they will trust AI-supported experiences.
Health Systems Are Competing With AI Search Tools for Patients
AI-generated answers are becoming a new digital front door. This article examines how health systems are adapting their search strategies, strengthening local signals and exploring owned AI experiences to remain visible as patient discovery changes.
Best for: Digital strategy, marketing, communications, consumer experience and business development
Hospital Ads Can Increase ED Visits, Medicare Spending, New Penn Study Finds
The harder question is not simply whether hospital advertising works, but what kind of utilization it creates. This summary of new research connects advertising exposure with changes in Medicare admissions, emergency department use and spending.
Best for: Marketing, strategic planning, business development and executive leadership
Trust in Health Care AI Is Conditional and Generational, Survey Shows
Patients' acceptance of AI depends on the stakes, transparency and continued access to a person. The findings offer useful direction for teams designing digital experiences that must balance efficiency with accountability and human reassurance.
Best for: Digital strategy, communications, patient experience and marketing
The resources members used to plan, align and execute
Q2's most accessed resources span conference planning, long-range strategy and day-to-day content operations. Each one helps turn a broad priority into a more structured and usable plan.
SHSMD Connections 2026 Session List
Explore the sessions shaping this year's conference across marketing, communications, strategic planning, business development, digital strategy and leadership. Use the list to identify relevant takeaways and make a stronger case for attending.
Strategic Assumptions Toolkit Members Only
Define, prioritize and regularly refresh the assumptions shaping your organization's next two to five years. The toolkit helps teams align on a shared view of the future and stress-test plans before uncertainty becomes strategic drift.
Best for: Strategic planning and executive leadership
Social Media Editorial Guide Members Only
Move from inconsistent posting to a repeatable monthly system. This nine-step guide supports content planning, platform-specific tone, publishing, reporting and reputation management across the social media workflow.
Best for: Marketing and communications
New tools for two increasingly connected challenges
This quarter's new resources address visibility and alignment. One helps organizations strengthen how AI systems interpret their digital presence. The other helps teams understand who can accelerate change, who may resist it and how engagement should differ.
Generative Engine Optimization Checklist Members Only
Audit the content, structured data, internal links and digital signals that help generative AI tools understand and accurately represent your organization. The checklist also creates a foundation for ongoing GEO monitoring and improvement.
Best for: Marketing and communications
Stakeholder Analysis and Needs Grid Members Only
Map stakeholders by influence and impact, anticipate resistance and select the right engagement approach for each group. The tool gives change efforts a more deliberate communication and alignment strategy.
Best for: Strategic planning
Perspective grounded in the work members are doing now
These posts connect two very different realities: the resourcefulness required in small and rural organizations and the technical shift required as search evolves from ranked links to synthesized answers.
The Work Behind the Work: What a Recent SHSMD Small & Rural Organizations Catalyst Conversation Reinforced
A reflection on the invisible coordination, judgment and persistence behind effective work in resource-constrained organizations. It captures why practical peer exchange matters when teams cannot solve complex challenges through scale alone.
Best for: All member segments, especially small and rural organizations
AEO and the New Rules of Healthcare Search
A practical introduction to answer engine optimization, including structured data, clear patient-centered content, trust signals and new ways to measure visibility when AI-generated answers reduce the role of the traditional click.
Best for: Marketing and digital strategy
How teams are strengthening performance and preparedness Members Only
Spectrum's Q2 highlights focus on two capabilities that increasingly define mature health care marketing and communications teams: using data responsibly to improve performance and preparing for high-stakes communication before a crisis begins.
Using CDPs for Enhanced ROI in Health-System Marketing in the Age of Privacy
Explore how customer data platforms can help marketing teams connect fragmented information, improve audience strategy and demonstrate stronger returns while adapting to a privacy environment that limits older targeting approaches.
Best for: Marketing
Creating a Crisis Playbook Helps to Manage Communications During Disasters
A crisis is the wrong time to decide who owns the message, which audiences come first or how approvals should work. This article shows why a clear playbook is essential to faster, more coordinated and more credible communication.
Best for: Communications
Leadership and brand strategy from inside the work
Q2's top podcast conversations examine what it takes to earn preference in unfamiliar markets and how an experienced health care leader built the perspective, confidence and range required to lead a complex institution.
From Acquisition to Acceptance: Building Awareness & Preference in New Communities
A practical discussion of the work required after market expansion or acquisition, when an organization must move beyond announcing its presence and begin earning familiarity, relevance and trust with a new community.
Best for: Marketing and communications
Women in Leadership | Sommer Kleweno Walley, CEO of Harborview Medical Center
Sommer Kleweno Walley reflects on taking opportunities before feeling fully ready, leading beyond a single area of expertise and using frontline experience to build credibility and connection across a complex organization.
Best for: All member segments
Practical lessons in mobile experience, measurement and privacy
These sessions focus on two areas where strategy is visible to both consumers and leadership: the quality of the mobile experience and the ability to connect marketing performance with credible, privacy-conscious measurement.
Differentiating Your Brand Through the Mobile Experience
Examine how mobile interactions shape brand perception across the patient journey and where health care organizations can reduce friction, improve usability and create a more distinct consumer experience.
Best for: Marketing, digital and patient experience leaders
Driving Performance in 2026: Data-Driven Health Care Marketing That Proves ROI and Protects Privacy
Learn how marketing teams can strengthen performance measurement, connect activity to organizational value and adapt data practices as privacy expectations and platform constraints continue to evolve.
Best for: Marketing
The conversations members used to solve real work together Members Only
These standout Q2 MySHSMD discussions show the value of a community built around practical exchange. Members shared policies, compared platforms, pressure-tested marketing's role and asked for guidance on issues that rarely have a one-size-fits-all answer.
Resources members can adapt, not recreate
Members exchanged policies and sample materials to help organizations address consent, media use and patient education with stronger processes and fewer avoidable gaps.
How teams are managing content across audiences and channels
These discussions focused on building useful content systems, managing patient stories responsibly and communicating clearly across consumer, physician and social channels.
Where marketing's role is expanding and being renegotiated
This quarter brought a lively exchange about employee engagement, internal communications, AI adoption and how marketing teams can work more effectively across departments without becoming the default owner of every organizational problem.
Guidance for reducing risk and advancing a career
Members sought recommendations in two areas with long-term consequences: strengthening HIPAA knowledge across marketing teams and finding the right support for career growth.
Peer intelligence before teams commit budget
When platform and vendor decisions carry significant cost, members turned to peers for candid recommendations, comparisons and lessons that are difficult to get from a sales presentation.
Upcoming conversations to strengthen strategy and leadership
Continue the quarter's strongest conversations with practical guidance for navigating workplace conflict and improving how hospitals, physicians and services appear across AI-powered search and answer engines.
Speak Up or Stay Silent? Navigating Workplace Conflict
Explore when to speak up, how to frame difficult conversations and how leaders can create cultures where healthy disagreement strengthens trust, performance and organizational outcomes.
August 11, 2026 | 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. CT | SHSMD members only
Winning the AI Recommendation: Connecting Hospital Brands and Doctors in the GEO Era
Learn how AI platforms gather and synthesize information about hospitals, physicians and services, then identify practical steps to improve discoverability, accuracy and trust across AI-powered search and answer engines.
July 29, 2026 | 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. CT | Open to members and non-members
Go beyond the quarter's highlights
These were the resources SHSMD members reached for most in Q2, but they are only a starting point. Explore the broader resource library, education offerings and member community to find practical support for the challenges in front of your team now.
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