HCP media's endemic-versus-reach debate misses the real question

By Alicia Cowley, MD, MBA, Medical Director, Phreesia Network Solutions

I spent years as an internist before I moved into health technology, and I still remember how I took in new information while caring for patients. During the workday, I reached for tools that helped me move quickly and safely: a dosing checker, a treatment reference or a clinical calculator. In the quieter moments, I filled gaps by skimming journal articles in JAMA or NEJM, comparing notes with colleagues or catching a session at a conference. In nearly all those moments, I was also being marketed to.

As a physician, I did not experience pharma messaging as endemic or non-endemic. I experienced it as either relevant to the patients I was seeing in practice or not. The channel mattered far less than the timing. Yet the industry still debates channel strategy as if the choice itself were the point: endemic environments, the clinical platforms where we work, or broad-reach channels like social, the open web and connected television, where we spend the rest of our lives. Framed that way, it is the wrong debate.

Clinicians live in both worlds. About 84% of our weekly medical-information time is digital, split almost evenly between clinical sources and everything else. Around three-quarters of us use social media for professional purposes, and we are more than twice as reachable on streaming television than the public. A plan that reaches me only in the EHR—or only in my feed—misses half the opportunities where I’m forming my opinion on treatment options for my patients.

Endemic media earns its place, and I would not argue otherwise. In my practice, when I was using a clinical tool with a specific patient or question in front of me, a relevant message landed because I was already thinking about that decision. The data bear this out. Adding endemic placements on top of a broad-reach campaign has produced roughly 14% additional lift in new prescriptions. 

But the moment of inquiry is a small slice of the week, and it is crowded. On any given day, I was reached by dozens of brands across every channel at once, and healthcare's media spend keeps climbing. Connected television alone passed 10 billion dollars last year, now about a third of the category's budget. Most of what reached me did not connect to a patient I was about to see, so most of it became background noise. Adding would not fix that: smarter delivery might have. Without a near-term opportunity to use new information, reaching me more simply means more noise. 

In a survey to capture the physician’s perspective, fielded on Sermo’s platform, 1 in 3 HCPs said pharmaceutical ads are never or rarely delivered to them at a time that's relevant and actionable for an upcoming patient visit. What’s more, 70% of HCPs said it would be more valuable to receive relevant treatment information shortly before an upcoming patient visit, compared to another time. 

This research bears out that what changes the experience is not the channel. It is whether the information arrives at a time when it can be connected to real clinical work. When relevant information reaches a provider across a combination of channels, including the clinical workflow and consumer channels, in the days before a relevant visit, it reinforces itself instead of competing for attention.

Reaching physicians across multiple channels requires a signal that says when, not just where—and it has to point forward. A confirmed upcoming appointment is a clear, forward-looking signal that a real future encounter—where treatment decisions will be made—is upcoming, rather than inferred preference from past prescribing, which may signal very little about new opportunities. Phreesia sits in that seat as the intake layer across the major EHRs, with more than 180 million patient visits in 2025. This lets a brand reach the right clinicians at the right moments, based on real-world data, across endemic and broad-reach channels alike.

I no longer see patients every day, but I have not forgotten what useful looked like from that chair. It was never about how many times a brand reached me. It was about whether relevant information showed up when it could help me help the individuals I cared for. Did I know what to look for when I walked into an exam room and met a rare disease patient? Did I default to the most prescribed product, or remember there are options that might be better for a patient who struggles with adherence or side effects? Had I seen the latest evidence on a therapy I considered prescribing?

Advances in medical science mean physicians now have a multitude of options with which to treat patients—the key is getting the evidence on them to those HCPs at the right time, when that information has the greatest chance of impacting the patients they’re about to see.   

Want to strengthen your provider marketing strategy with forward-looking engagement? Request a demo to see how Phreesia's ProviderConnect can help.