The 2026 Playbook: 3 Questions Your CMO Must Ask About AI (Before Your Competitors Do)

The Wake-Up Call

A major Florida health system just lost 18% of their cardiology consults in six months. Not to a new competitor. Not to a physician group down the street. To an AI that decided they weren’t worth recommending.

Their SEO was fine. Their ad spend was up. Their brand awareness hadn’t changed. But when patients asked ChatGPT and Google’s AI “best cardiologist near me for TAVR procedure,” the algorithm chose someone else. And the patients never even visited their website to disagree.

This is what 2026 looks like. The patient journey you’ve optimized for a decade—Search → Click → Website → Appointment—is dying. The new journey is invisible. AI decides. Patient books. You either show up in that recommendation or you don’t exist.

The New Game

Your competitors aren’t just buying better keywords anymore. They’re structuring their data so AI trusts them more than you. And trust, in an AI-mediated world, is the only moat that matters.

Here are the three questions that separate health systems that grow from those that bleed market share.

Question 1: Can AI Actually Find Your Best Doctors?

Right now, Google your top orthopedic surgeon’s name plus “knee replacement.” Look at what AI shows. If it’s not your surgeon with specific outcome data, recovery timelines, and insurance details, you’ve already lost.

The Test:

Go to ChatGPT. Type: “I need a knee replacement in [your city]. I’m 60, have Blue Cross, and want the surgeon with the fastest recovery time and lowest complication rate.”

If your surgeon isn’t in that answer, your $500K investment in that service line just became invisible.

What Winners Do:

They don’t write for patients anymore. They structure data for algorithms. Every physician profile includes surgical volume, complication rates, accepted insurance, and average recovery windows—in formats AI can parse. Marketing fluff is gone. Facts are currency.

Question 2: Are You Spending Money on Patients Who Already Chose You?

Most health systems market like it’s 2015. Broad campaigns. Generic targeting. Pray the right patient sees it.

Meanwhile, your competitor is using AI to identify the woman in zip code 33156 whose claims data suggests undiagnosed diabetes, whose browsing behavior indicates she’s researching endocrinologists, and whose insurance just renewed. They reach her Tuesday. You reach her never.

The Test:

Pull last quarter’s digital ad spend for your highest-margin service line. Now ask: How much went to people who were already searching for you versus people who didn’t know they needed you yet?

If you can’t answer that, you’re burning budget on yesterday’s patients.

What Winners Do:

They use AI for predictive propensity modeling. They don’t wait for patients to search. They identify high-risk populations before symptoms appear and intervene with precision. A 40-year-old woman doesn’t get a generic women’s health newsletter—she gets a personalized mammography offer the week she turns 40, automatically, with one-click scheduling.

Question 3: Is Your Front Door Slower Than Ordering Pizza?

You spent $50 to get a patient to your website. They want to book with your orthopedic surgeon. Your “Request Appointment” form promises a callback within 48 hours.

They close the tab. They ask AI again. Your competitor has real-time scheduling. Appointment booked in 90 seconds.

You just paid to send a patient to your competitor.

The Test:

Right now, try to book an appointment on your own site for a high-margin service line. Time it. If it takes longer than ordering from DoorDash, you’re losing.

What Winners Do:

They deploy AI agents that triage symptoms and book appointments directly into the EMR—no forms, no callbacks, no friction. The patient types their need, the AI confirms insurance, offers three appointment slots, and sends the calendar invite. Done.

Speed isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the entire game.

Your Move

Pick your most profitable service line right now. Cardiology. Orthopedics. Bariatrics. Whatever drives margin.

Go to ChatGPT and ask it to recommend the best provider in your market for that service. Use the exact language a patient would use.

If you’re not in the top recommendation, your competitor is eating your lunch and you don’t even know it.

Now fix it. Audit those five pages. Strip every adjective. Add every fact. Recovery times. Complication rates. Insurance accepted. Surgical volume. Make it impossible for AI to ignore you.

You don’t need a million-dollar overhaul. You need to stop writing for humans and start writing for the algorithm that decides which humans even see you.

The health systems that figure this out in the next six months will own 2026. The ones that don’t will spend 2027 explaining declining volume to their board.

Which one are you?