Jenny Bristow and Vice President of Data & Technology Mark Brandes of Hedy & Hopp discuss their proprietary solution, Epic UTM Connect*, developed to help healthcare marketers bridge the long-standing data gap between digital marketing campaigns and patient acquisition and revenue within their Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. They explain the challenges of achieving true marketing ROI in a privacy-forward world and detail how this one-time project allows for patient-level attribution and improved performance measurement.

Episode notes:

The Data Disconnect: Hedy & Hopp created Epic UTM Connect to help healthcare marketers overcome the persistent struggle to access and show true business impact data (patient appointments, revenue) versus engagement metrics marketers can break down by UTM parameters.

What Epic UTM Connect Is: A tool that captures UTM parameters from digital campaigns, packages them, and securely inserts them into the Epic patient record.

Achieving True ROI: The ability to track a patient's journey from a marketing touchpoint all the way through appointment and fulfillment to calculate the return on investment (ROI).

Easy & Fast Implementation: The tool is fast and lightweight to implement and doesn’t require Hedy & Hopp to gain analyst access to Epic. Implementation only requires access to website analytics and the CMS.

Technology & Compliance: The solution is HIPAA compliant and secure, leveraging the healthcare organization's existing Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Epic. It works with any web analytics platform (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Site Improve, etc.) by pulling data directly from the website.

Use Case Requirements: The solution's effectiveness is dependent on the organization having a consistent and well-defined UTM parameter strategy in place.

Attribution Limitations: The tool primarily provides last-touch attribution, meaning it will not capture the source of every conversion and will show gaps in the full multi-touch patient journey.

Standalone Value: Epic UTM Connect is a standalone, one-time implementation that is valuable for improving visibility and does not require healthcare marketing teams to use other Epic marketing tools.

Learn more about Hedy & Hopp’s Epic capabilities: https://hedyandhopp.com/our-expertise/epic-for-healthcare-marketing/ Contact Hedy & Hopp to chat with us about how Epic UTM Connect can support your marketing efforts: https://hedyandhopp.com/connect-with-us/ Connect with Jenny:

Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/Connect with Mark:

Email: mark.brandes@hedyandhopp.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbrandes/ If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.

*Epic®, Epic Systems, and related product names and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Systems Corporation. This content is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Epic Systems Corporation.

Jenny Bristow and Senior Digital Producer Suzie Schmitt of Hedy & Hopp discuss the pervasive, yet often misunderstood, risks of tech dependencies for healthcare marketers. They explain what happens when single points of failure like AWS and Cloudflare experience outages, examine the instability of the internet's open-source foundation, and explain why these issues uniquely impact healthcare organizations. Learn actionable steps to create, document, and execute a disaster plan to mitigate operational and compliance risks.

Episode notes:

Understanding Tech Dependency Risks: How the internet's "Jenga tower" of dependencies creates massive ripple effects from a single break

Cloud Monopolies and Backup Strategy: The risk of relying on three major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) and the need to have your website backup on a separate infrastructure from your production environment

The Open-Source Developer Issue: The unsustainability of large enterprises depending on unpaid, volunteer open-source developers

Cloudflare Explained: How this intermediary service facilitates a secure and faster internet, and what happens when it fails

The Responsibility of Covered Entities: The HIPAA breach notification clock starts when an outage occurs, so it’s important to clearly document the timeline of events

Creating a Disaster Plan and Crisis Communication Strategy: The necessity of defining roles and establishing a communication plan for an inevitable failure

Documenting Dependencies: Steps to list and track all dependencies so that you can quickly assess if an outage impacts your website

Marketing's Role in Security: Why outage communication falls to the marketing team and the need for close alignment with IT on the disaster plan

Connect with Jenny:

Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/

Connect with Suzie:

Email: suzie.schmitt@hedyandhopp.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzie-schmitt/

If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.

Hedy & Hopp CEO & Founder Jenny Bristow, Director of Growth Marissa Gurrister, Senior Account Manager Shelby Auer, and Growth & Operations Manager - Practice Division Abby Davis recap the key trends, popular sessions, and main takeaways from The Healthcare Interactive Conference (HCIC) 2025 in Las Vegas.

HCIC 2025 was full of energy and innovative content, with a major buzz surrounding Jenny’s Learning Lab covering marketing and ROI tracking tools available within Epic. Several sessions stood out, including the CMO panel that included Stuart Dill from Vanderbilt. He spoke about brand preference, awareness, and consideration, emphasizing that marketers need to position campaigns differently for each phase. The Mount Sinai social media team, including manager Brian Crowley and coordinator Suzy Qiu, presented a highly praised, interactive session titled "The Camera-Ready Physician" that detailed their boot camp method for coaching physicians to create unscripted, organic short-form video content. Vanessa Hill from Beth Israel Lahey Health and Reba Thompson from WG Content shared their story of replatforming 17 websites, which they creatively framed as a "choose your own adventure" for the audience. Another speaker who creatively presented was Kevin Snyder, CMO at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, who showed up to his Automation Meets Empathy session in a superhero cape.Beyond the sessions, key industry challenges discussed on the conference floor included the complexity of navigating patient privacy and compliance when teams are siloed, and the urgent need for new strategies in content optimization to rank highly in the difficult landscape of SEO, GEO, and zero-click search results.Looking ahead, the biggest takeaway overall from attendees, as noted by Jenny, is that healthcare marketers are being continuously asked to do more with smaller budgets, requiring teams to develop creative solutions and maximize assets as they look ahead to 2026.For those who missed it, Hedy & Hopp’s popular Learning Lab "Epic for Marketers" will be presented as a webinar on November 20.

Connect with Jenny:

Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/

Connect with Marissa:

Email: marissa.gurrister@hedyandhopp.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marissa-gurrister/

Connect with Shelby:

Email: shelby.auer@hedyandhopp.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shelby-wanne/

Connect with Abby:

Email: abby.davis@hedyandhopp.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adavis513/

Register to attend “Unlocking Epic for Marketers,” a free webinar on November 20 hosted by Jenny: https://hedyandhopp.com/Epicwebinar/ Purchase a hand painted sweatshirt created by our former Artist in Residence Lauren Younge: https://www.laurenyounge.com/store-lauren-younge-art/painted-crewnecks

Follow floral artist Annie Kuhn with Verde Designs: https://www.instagram.com/verdestl/

If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love to hear your feedback! Please consider leaving us a review on your preferred listening platform and sharing it with others.