Patient experience has become one of healthcare’s most urgent strategic priorities. It shapes loyalty, reimbursement, growth, and competitive positioning, and health system leaders increasingly recognize that experience cannot be separated from data quality.
A recent report published by Becker’s Healthcare in collaboration with Verato examines how leading health systems are improving patient experience by addressing a fundamental challenge: fragmented, unreliable data. The findings highlight a common conclusion across organizations. Without a trusted, enterprise-wide Customer 360, even well-funded experience initiatives struggle to deliver results.
This post explores these key themes and what they mean for healthcare organizations working to modernize patient experience strategies.
Why patient experience has become a business imperative
Patient experience is no longer treated as a single initiative. It is increasingly viewed as a core driver of growth, loyalty, reimbursement, and performance. Nearly half of health system C-suite leaders now rank patient experience as their top strategic initiative, a significant shift from just a few years ago.
To meet rising expectations, organizations are investing in personalization, seamless engagement, and omnichannel care journeys. Each of these depends on one underlying capability: knowing who the patient is across every interaction.
The hidden barrier to better experiences: fragmented identity
Healthcare organizations generate enormous volumes of data, but much of it remains unused or untrusted. The challenge is not volume alone. Patient data is fragmented across EHRs, CRMs, lab systems, imaging platforms, and point solutions, often creating multiple records for the same individual.
When identity is fragmented, patient experience suffers. Scheduling delays, denied claims, repeated intake, and inconsistent communications all stem from systems that cannot reliably recognize the same person across touchpoints. These issues also create operational drag, increase compliance risk, and contribute to administrative waste.
From disconnected records to a true Customer & Patient 360
Customer 360 might go by different names in different organizations—Patient 360, Consumer 360, Person 360—but it all relies on the same principle: bringing together clinical, financial, consumer, marketing, and household data into a single, accurate, longitudinal profile. This unified view enables personalization across the care journey and forms the foundation of effective healthcare strategies.
Achieving Customer 360 requires more than data aggregation. It depends on a strong identity foundation that can break down silos, enrich incomplete records, and consistently match data to the correct individual over time. Without that foundation, personalization remains inconsistent and fragile.
Why identity sits at the center of Customer 360 in healthcare
Identity is the connective tissue of patient experience. Traditional matching approaches often fail when demographic information changes or contains errors, treating identity as static rather than evolving.
Modern Customer 360 healthcare strategies treat identity as a strategic capability. By continuously resolving identity across systems, organizations can maintain accurate patient profiles that support consistent engagement, care coordination, and analytics.
Health systems applying this approach have demonstrated measurable improvements in loyalty, operational efficiency, and cost reduction by delivering a consistent person view across clinical and non-clinical touchpoints.
Interoperability makes connected experiences possible
A unified identity view only delivers value when it can move across the enterprise. Interoperability ensures that trusted identity and complete data are available wherever care is delivered.
When interoperability is in place, organizations eliminate manual workflows, reduce duplication, and enable real-time data sharing. This allows teams to deliver the small but critical moments that define patient experience, such as accurate greetings, proactive reminders, and seamless handoffs between care settings.
Why AI depends on a 360-degree view
AI initiatives are only as strong as the data behind them. Models trained on incomplete or conflicting data produce unreliable insights, which in healthcare can introduce safety and financial risk.
A strong Customer 360 foundation provides AI systems with clean, connected, and enriched data tied to the correct individual. With trusted identity in place, AI can move beyond prediction to action with confidence.
Customer 360 as a growth strategy
Leading organizations are increasingly treating identity as business capability rather than technical projects. Marketing, digital, and strategy leaders are partnering with IT to use trusted data to re-engage patients, improve attribution, and reduce operational friction.
These efforts demonstrate that Customer 360 is not an abstract concept. When built on accurate identity, it becomes a driver of engagement, efficiency, and sustainable growth.
Go deeper: Read the full research
To explore concrete examples of how health systems are using trusted identity and unified data to improve patient experience, download the full white paper, “Accuracy is the new currency: Inside 4 systems’ data-driven push for better patient experiences.”
