Featuring insights from Dr. Amit Phull, Chief Physician Experience Officer at Doximity
Are we actually helping providers, or just distracting them? It’s a question every healthcare marketer should be asking—especially now, when context drives trust and receptivity at the Point of Care. As care journeys become less linear and more self-guided, with new modes of access and growing fragmentation, the risk of adding friction instead of value is higher than ever. What used to be a relatively predictable system now demands more thoughtful, connected support—both for patients and for the providers guiding them.
To better understand what clinicians truly need from Point of Care resources—and how the systems surrounding them can deliver support instead of friction—we spoke with Dr. Amit Phull, Chief Physician Experience Officer at Doximity and a practicing emergency medicine physician.
Across nearly 90 minutes of candid, unscripted conversation, Dr. Phull shared his perspective on practicing medicine in a hybrid world, how digital tools are reshaping provider-patient dynamics, and why even well-intentioned interventions can fall flat when they ignore clinical context. What emerged wasn’t just a critique of healthcare—it was a hopeful vision for how the Point of Care can evolve.
We have distilled key insights from the conversation, integrating Dr. Phull’s own words and frontline experience to help marketers better align their strategies with the realities providers face today.
"I didn’t go to medical school to be a click counter."
Disrupted at the Point of Care: What Went Wrong
In emergency medicine, time is scarce, stakes are high, and attention is a finite resource. When clinicians are focused on saving lives, even well-meaning additions to the workflow can register as a disruption. Unfortunately, many Point of Care campaigns do just that: interrupt instead of assist.
Dr. Amit Phull experiences this firsthand—not only as a practicing emergency physician, but also as Chief Physician Experience Officer at Doximity, where he works closely with clinicians to shape digital tools that meet the moment. His perspective isn’t niche; it’s simply more acute. Emergency medicine puts the cost of distraction into sharp relief, but the tension he describes exists across every specialty.
“We sometimes reduce the complexity of a task to how many clicks it takes—but I didn’t go to medical school to be a click counter. We need to keep the right level of reverence for the patient-provider relationship, and that means furnishing tools, educational content, even marketing materials that support the interaction—not distract from it or feel adversarial.”
His critique isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about intent. When engagement is measured purely by clicks or impressions, it often ignores the clinical context and risks alienating the very providers it’s meant to support. Without provider alignment, even well-funded campaigns risk low traction and missed outcomes.
While time scarcity may be most visible in acute care settings, providers across the system are under the same pressures—to do more with less. And that’s where well-designed engagement still has room to shine. Clinicians are highly receptive to resources that make their jobs easier by integrating into workflows and enhancing the patient-provider conversation—whether that means streamlining decisions, reinforcing guidance, or improving cooperative care.
Rather than measuring interaction volume, Phull encourages marketers and system designers to ask a more meaningful question: What does success really look like at the Point of Care?
That shift, from volume to value, is more than semantics. It’s a mindset change that reframes engagement as a service to care. It taps into something healthcare marketers are keenly aware of: at the end of the day, we are not pushing product. We are helping people. To earn trust, marketers must stop optimizing for visibility alone and keep the people on the front lines, and the people on the line, at the center of every strategy.
Rethinking Success at the Point of Care
While every customer-centered campaign should earn its audience, success at the Point of Care demands a higher standard. This isn’t just another media placement—it’s an environment defined by clinical relevance, personal vulnerability, and highly focused attention. Patients and providers alike are navigating complex, emotionally charged decisions. In these moments, messages aren’t ignored because of distraction—they’re dismissed because they fail to meet the specificity, sensitivity, or substance required by the moment.
A Super Bowl placement isn’t keeping company with a dialysis patient or occupying a health portal as someone struggles to understand a chronic condition. In a space as intimate as the Point of Care, what you say, how you say it, and when it arrives matters deeply.
When Point of Care content meets the moment—clinically, contextually, and emotionally—it earns more than a glance. It earns trust. That trust may not register as immediate action, but it lays the groundwork for provider confidence, patient openness, and meaningful downstream impact.
Dr. Amit Phull urges marketers to flip the model: stop defining success from a content delivery standpoint, and start defining it from the provider’s point of view. Yes, campaigns should be measured, but only if metrics serve the mission. If marketers don’t start with purpose, they risk designing for the wrong outcomes. Visibility alone isn’t success. Usefulness is.
“Instead of jumping to a solution, start by asking the real experts—clinicians—why a solution is needed in the first place. That shift brings clarity and moves us closer to what really matters.”
The goal is not a click. The goal is engagement. In a fragmented, nonlinear care environment, physician buy-in is more than a courtesy; it’s a gatekeeper function. Even if your message reaches the office, it may never reach the patient if a provider finds it distracting, irrelevant, or poorly timed.
As POCMA’s 2025 Marketing Report found, over 80% of patients value in-office messaging, and more than 75% of physicians regularly use digital health apps themselves—indicating both audiences are information-ready. Yet only 44% of providers refer patients to those resources. That gap may stem from a preference for non-branded, educational materials. Physicians want to enable and educate—driving understanding, behavioral change, and retention. When marketing feels like a pitch, the message may be seen, but the opportunity is lost.
Clinicians don’t want more input. They want better input—and they know the difference instantly. That’s why we need to reconfigure what we mean by true success.
True success at the Point of Care should be measured by:
- Clinical usefulness: Content that informs, clarifies, or supports decision-making in real time.
- Relational alignment: Messaging that respects and strengthens the provider-patient dynamic.
- Situational appropriateness: Relevance to the clinical setting, specialty, and moment in care.
Translating these principles into practice requires marketers to rethink how success is defined, tracked, and valued. Automation and templated KPIs have long shaped marketing norms—but they weren’t built for the Point of Care. Impressions are not outcomes. And the more nuanced care becomes, the more essential it is to ensure alignment over automation.
“Clinicians can tell the difference, immediately, between thoughtful content designed to educate or support therapeutic decisions and rote nonsense being firehosed in their direction.”
That difference—the line between aligned and intrusive—often determines whether content is dismissed or endorsed. Genuinely useful messaging earns more than a glance; it earns trust. That may show up in the room, passed digitally through a portal, or recalled when it matters most. These actions may not be tracked in a traditional dashboard, but they represent real-world traction.
“Even the busiest physicians will take the time to engage—if the content is high quality, delivered at the right moment, and respectful of their workflow. Intent really matters.”
For Dr. Phull, relevance, both clinical and emotional, is the key differentiator. It’s not just about what you say; it’s how you frame it. At Doximity, even subtle shifts in positioning—like “Here’s what your patients are reading”—led to stronger engagement, not because they were louder, but because they reflected thoughtfulness.
“We’ve seen engagement go up when the message is positioned in context like, ‘this is what your patients are seeing.’ That level of thoughtfulness signals relevance and usefulness, which is what clinicians are looking for.”
The return on relevance may not be splashy but it’s strategic. It shows up in provider endorsement, patient follow-through, and long-term brand trust. At the Point of Care, success isn’t about dominating the moment. It’s about showing up for the moment with something that helps.
Technology Is Not the Enemy—But Misuse Is
Technology is now foundational to the practice of medicine. But like any tool, its value depends on how it’s used and who it’s designed for. When deployed thoughtfully, technology can support decision-making, close gaps, and elevate the provider-patient conversation. When misapplied, it becomes an obstruction.
For Dr. Amit Phull, the problem isn’t that technology exists in the exam room. It’s how often that technology is designed around business goals rather than patient care or provider utility.
“A lot comes down to asking what the use case is. Who is the technology actually being designed for? If you’re surfacing something valuable, but I have to click through four layers to get to it—that’s where the friction lives.”
His point is echoed across clinical environments: the frustration isn’t with innovation itself, but with the way it’s implemented.
“Physicians aren’t anti-technology. We’re anti-disruption. We’re constantly handed tools that weren’t built with our workflows—or our patients—in mind.”
Providers are asked to navigate increasingly complex digital environments, yet many tools disregard the fundamental constraints of care. Interfaces are unintuitive. Alerts are poorly timed. Features prioritize visibility over function. And in the process, these solutions, however well-meaning, start to erode the trust they were meant to reinforce.
“Even well-intentioned tools, if they’re not positioned right or are poorly timed, create a kind of reflexive eye-roll. It’s not just that they’re ignored—they add to mental fatigue and erode trust.”
This disconnect doesn’t just affect physicians. It affects patients—especially when technology overwhelms rather than supports the decision-making process.
“What patients need isn’t just access—they need guidance. Giving someone five links or ten treatment options without a framework isn’t empowering them. It’s abandoning them.”
That emotional weight is often overlooked by marketers focused on automation or scalability. But at the Point of Care, attention must be earned rather than assumed. Brands must design tools and content not just to be seen, but to help. Not just to inform, but to support action.
Brands have to evaluate their solutions from the start. Good Point of Care strategies aren’t only about minimizing friction or optimizing UX. They are also, imperatively, about fundamentally rethinking how we show up for providers, so they can better show up for their patients.
Ultimately, providers are not looking for more dashboards, widgets, or branded noise. They’re looking for solutions that genuinely reduce cognitive load and enhance care quality. And when those tools are well-designed, with input from clinicians, they can become trusted assets in the workflow rather than friction points
“It’s not that we don’t want help. We just want the right help, delivered in the right way.”
Stop Treating Patients Like Shoppers
In an effort to modernize healthcare, many technology solutions have adopted design principles from the retail sector—emphasizing convenience, simplicity, and user choice. While intuitive interfaces can enhance the patient experience, Dr. Amit Phull cautions that applying a shopping-cart model to healthcare technology oversimplifies the realities of medical care.
“We’ve started treating patients like consumers, designing tech experiences to mimic shopping for shoes. But nothing in a shopping cart is going to solve your mom’s diabetes, or your dad’s chronic back pain. These are not retail problems.”
Dr. Phull acknowledges that patients want user-friendly technology but warns that the consumer-style model, which thrives on speed and linear progression, isn’t built for the realities of care. It’s designed to move users from browsed options to conversion moments—then treats the journey as complete. But healthcare isn’t linear, and patients don’t “check out” of care.
“We give patients all these choices, assuming they can navigate them from a place of clarity. So they have all these options—and no support. That’s not understanding what they’re experiencing. That’s not how care should work.”
While patients do appreciate simplicity and autonomy, medical decisions are rarely linear. The shopping-cart model assumes independence and clarity. It reduces decision-making to a sequence: browse, select, convert. But in healthcare, choices unfold through uncertainty and require collaboration, education, and context.
“We assume too much about what people know, what they can retain, and what they can make sense of. We bombard patients with irrelevant or overly complex health content, then wonder why they don’t change behavior. That’s not education—it’s pressure without support.”
Volume is not value. Too much information—especially when it lacks clinical relevance or emotional sensitivity—can overwhelm patients and actually damage their disposition to care. Respecting the cognitive load of medical decisions means designing support that is meaningful, not just available.
Instead of simply presenting options with an end-goal in mind, healthcare technology should enable informed decision-making by integrating clinical guidance, conversations with practitioners and care teams, caregiver resources, and personalized support. This approach respects the complexity of medical decisions and the emotional context in which they are made.
“Healthcare is naturally full of really hard choices that can’t be fixed just by creating a more intuitive interface. You have to recognize that the patient journey is emotional, confusing, and often nonlinear. If we design around that, we’ll do better with both technology and outcomes.”
Moving beyond design models built for retail means centering the people who actually use the tools—patients and providers. When healthcare tech is designed with them in mind, it becomes something more powerful than convenience: it becomes care.
Context of Care: Understanding the Physician Perspective
Behind every Point of Care touchpoint is a clinician navigating a system under strain. Rising patient volumes, growing documentation burdens, fragmented digital tools, and an influx of patient-generated data have compressed even the most routine interactions. Many providers describe a daily reality shaped more by throughput than care. In editorials, interviews, and across professional networks, a common concern emerges: if these pressures go unaddressed, the ability to deliver meaningful, patient-centered care will only erode further. In this context, how healthcare brands and technology partners engage with providers isn’t just a messaging issue. It is a care issue.
On the ground, more technology doesn’t always mean more care. What may seem like a simple interface update or workflow integration from a brand or tech perspective can feel like another layer of burden to the clinicians using it. As Dr. Amit Phull reminds us, clinical time is not elastic.
“There’s already so much happening in every minute of the clinical day—decisions, conversations, documentation. You can’t just keep layering on asks without understanding the workload that already exists.”
The emotional labor is just as real. Many clinicians feel the mission of medicine—the reason they chose this work—is at risk of getting lost in the noise. Time with patients, once the core of care, is now measured in minutes.
“It’s not just that we only have 12 minutes with a patient—it’s that we’ve lost what that time was supposed to be for. That’s what wears people down.”
This erosion of time and purpose can lead to significant burnout. According to a survey conducted by Doximity, around 81% of doctors report being overworked, with 88% stating that the existing physician shortage is causing their practice to suffer. Moreover, 86% express concern about the American health care system’s ability to care for an aging population. (Doximity 2024)
Despite these challenges, the intrinsic motivation that draws individuals to the medical profession remains a powerful force. Dr. Phull reflects on his own journey:
“I liked the idea of being by someone’s side in a critical moment. In emergency medicine, every day is different. You go in and you have to be prepared to deal with a variety of medical issues that your patients may have encountered. And oftentimes, you really have to leverage limited resources in order to create solutions.”
This commitment to patient care, even amidst systemic challenges, underscores the sacrifices many physicians make. They endure long hours, emotional stress, and bureaucratic hurdles, driven by a deep-seated desire to make a difference in their patients’ lives.
In this climate, trust isn’t just a value. It’s a necessity. Providers don’t have the bandwidth to decipher vague value propositions or filter irrelevant content. They need support that fits and not thinly veiled, self-interested content that complicates. As Dr. Phull emphasizes, respect for a clinician’s time and role must be the starting point and not a retrofitted consideration.
“We’re not looking for more stuff. We’re looking for the right stuff—tools or resources that genuinely help, not just show up.”
And that selectivity isn’t self-serving—it’s an extension of their responsibility to patients. Clinicians aren’t gatekeeping because they’re resistant to messaging. They’re discerning because they know their patients. And they know what’s at stake when information is delivered without the right frame or sensitivity.
“We’re dealing with a health literacy problem in this country. So when we put a sheet in someone’s hands or send them a message through a portal, we need to ask: is this actually helping them understand? Or are we assuming way too much about what they’re ready for?”
This is why context matters so deeply in Point of Care. If you don’t understand the provider perspective, you can’t earn their attention, let alone their trust. What may feel like “helpful engagement” from a marketing lens can register as cognitive clutter to a physician managing a full caseload. When providers choose to pass on content, they’re not just validating its credibility. They’re extending trust to their patients.
Rebuilding Trust in a System That Feels Broken
In many ways, the biggest challenge facing modern healthcare isn’t access, technology, or cost. It’s trust.
Patients arrive at appointments with search results, social media threads, and sometimes, a deep skepticism rooted in previous experiences. Providers, meanwhile, are under immense pressure to do more with less. They navigate overwhelming caseloads, administrative hurdles, information overload, and a growing sense that the system isn’t built for them anymore than it is for patients. They often end up with only minutes with each patient, which takes away much of the cause they felt they went to medical school to fulfill.
According to Dr. Amit Phull, this erosion of trust isn’t theoretical. It is palpable.
“There’s a very real erosion of trust. Patients feel like they’re being sold to. Physicians feel like they’re being manipulated away from their best judgement. And nobody feels like they have the time to stop and sort it out.”
Dr. Phull describes a growing disconnect in the exam room: patients come prepared to push back, and physicians arrive already exhausted. It’s a dynamic that undermines care before it even begins. And while marketing may not be the root cause, it often becomes collateral damage. If messaging feels overly promotional, self-serving, or poorly timed, it only reinforces that distrust.
But marketing also has the opportunity to be part of the repair. The path to rebuilding trust, according to Phull, starts with clarity, humility, and actual utility.
“Just be helpful. Show up with something useful, grounded in the right tone and timing—and don’t ask for anything in return right away. That’s what resets the dynamic.”
In other words, marketing at the Point of Care isn’t about the sale. It’s about restoring confidence in information, respecting the clinical setting, and creating the conditions for better conversations. When content or tools are clearly designed to support—not persuade—they become part of the solution.
Phull challenges marketers to think like clinicians:
“Spend a day in the ER, shadow a primary care doctor, or sit in on oncology rounds. You’ll see what support actually means. It’s about offering relevant, affirming, usable information. And how it’s introduced matters just as much as what it says.”
Closing Thought
Marketers don’t need to become clinicians to do better work. But they do need to start thinking more like partners, and less like promoters. That means asking different questions: Is this content genuinely useful? Is this tool designed to support, not compete with, the care conversation? Is the intent behind it clear and considerate?
Throughout our conversation, Dr. Phull made one point consistently: when we start from a place of humility, and prioritize what care teams and patients truly need, we stop guessing and start contributing.
Because the opportunity in front of us isn’t more targeting, more dashboards, or more disruption. It’s the chance to refocus on what the Point of Care has always represented—not just a location, but a moment of trust. One that deserves clarity, context, and care.
“The opportunity in front of us is not more screens. It is more alignment, more wisdom, and a return to what the Point of Care was always supposed to be—a place where patients and providers connect, honestly, to make better decisions together.”
