Healthcare organizations already know fragmented data hurts the patient experience. The 2026 Research Report from S&P Global, Bridging the gap between patient expectations and healthcare delivery, makes it clear: patients are frustrated, loyalty is at risk, and healthcare leaders are elevating experience as a strategic priority.
But the research highlights another critical issue: the impact of poor data quality in healthcare on labor, operations, and staffing.
Behind every duplicate record, mismatched profile, and disconnected workflow is real human labor compensating for identity and data quality problems.
That matters because identity issues are no longer just a patient access problem or a revenue cycle problem. They are becoming a workforce efficiency problem, too.
Healthcare is funding manual work to fix data quality issues and identity fragmentation
The report shows the front-end symptoms. Consumers are forced to repeat information, encounter inconsistent records, and increasingly feel like they have to start over when interacting with different parts of the healthcare system. In fact, 81% of consumers report having to provide the same personal or medical information across different providers and departments, and 68% say it frequently feels like “starting from scratch.”
According to the report, 68% of healthcare organizations say duplicate or conflicting consumer or patient profiles are a severe or moderate issue across their organization. Even more telling, 84% report having at least one full-time equivalent dedicated to resolving consumer or patient data issues. Nearly 60% have two or more FTEs focused on this work, and 18% have five or more.
The “identity tax” is increasing healthcare labor costs, not just patient experience issues
Healthcare leaders have spent years talking about digital transformation, interoperability, and patient engagement. But when teams are still dedicating people to reconcile bad or incomplete data, those investments cannot reach full value.
The report already shows how identity friction undermines experience and financial performance. It found that 84% of healthcare organizations report data mismatches contribute to lost revenue, and 72% say inconsistent identity data creates friction that consumers feel in every micro-moment of engagement.
This friction creates a labor burden across access, intake, billing, care coordination, and service operations.
In other words, many healthcare organizations feel the impact of poor identity data twice: First in patient frustration and revenue leakage, and then again in the manual work required to patch over the problem.
Automating patient data capture reduces manual work and prevents errors at the source
Healthcare organizations reduce data quality issues in healthcare and lower healthcare labor costs when they automate patient data capture across intake, access, and engagement workflows.
Automation replaces repetitive patient data entry with AI-driven validation, standardization, and identity resolution. Instead of staff manually re-entering and correcting information across systems, organizations can capture accurate data once and use it everywhere. This approach reduces medical record errors, eliminates duplicate records, and removes the need for ongoing reconciliation work that drives up labor costs.
Healthcare labor costs rise without an integrated data foundation
That burden is not surprising when you look at the state of Customer 360 maturity.
According to the report, only 6% of respondents say they have a fully integrated, enterprise-wide Customer 360 view today. Most are still in partial integration territory. That gap helps explain why duplicate profiles and conflicting system views remain so common.
Healthcare leaders are reacting: many say improving patient experience now ranks above digital transformation, cost reduction, and workforce efficiency as a top-three strategic priority over the next 12 to 18 months.
The next wave of investment is about getting the identity layer right
The good news is the market appears to be moving.
Over half of organizations are planning moderate or large Customer 360 investment over the next 12 to 18 months. Their top priorities include improving interoperability, fixing identity issues such as duplicates and mismatches, and consolidating data platforms.
Healthcare organizations are starting to recognize that solving identity is not a back-office cleanup project. It is foundational to scaling personalized engagement, modernizing operations, and supporting AI-ready workflows.
And that may be the most important takeaway of all: healthcare organizations that want to reduce friction, improve loyalty, unlock digital transformation, and avoid burning staff time on avoidable reconciliation work must treat identity as enterprise infrastructure.
Trusted identity is required to reduce data quality issues in healthcare
Healthcare consumers have made their expectations clear. They want the same seamless, connected, personalized experiences they receive from leading brands in other industries. The report found that 95% of consumers expect healthcare experiences to match those standards.
But meeting that expectation takes more than a portal refresh or a better outreach campaign.
It requires a trusted identity foundation that reduces duplicates, resolves conflicting profiles, and gives every team and system a more complete view of the individual.
Until then, organizations will keep paying for fragmentation in the form of poor experiences, lost revenue, and unnecessary manual work.
Read the full report, Bridging the gap between patient expectations and healthcare delivery, for more insights and next steps to achieving a true Customer 360.
