The Intersection of Healthcare Marketing Communications and Patient Experience: A Qualitative Study

Providing a positive experience to patients at healthcare organizations is a complex undertaking and a continuous process due to staff turnover and the ever-changing industry. Positive patient experiences are an important part of the healing process as they relate to better outcomes in quality assessments. The purpose of this case study was to examine the nature of collaboration between clinical and marketing communications teams working to improve patient experience. To uncover lived experience, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 participants–nine clinicians and nine marketing communications professionals–from 10 organizations. The study sought to understand how marketing communications teams collaborated with clinicians, how they described barriers to collaboration, and what metrics they used to measure patient experience. Four themes related to the research questions arose: a lack of understanding of each other’s roles persists, a standard definition of patient experience has not yet been adopted, healthcare organizations seek third-party help in developing patient experience programs, and rewards, recognition, and ongoing education are the key ways healthcare organizations keep their staff focused on delivering care that will lead to positive patient experiences. Future research opportunities should include considering marketing communications role in patient experience programs from additional perspectives, especially executive leaders, whose influence is critical to promoting collaboration among team members