Live From HMPS 26: When Digital Experience Fails, Patients Walk Away

When we talk about healthcare digital transformation, the conversation often gravitates toward big topics like AI, technology platforms, and changing consumer behavior. But sometimes seemingly tactical details have an outsized impact on patient acquisition and trust.

I sat down with Chris Pace, VP of Digital Experience Strategy at SearchStax, live at the Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategy Summit (HMPS) to talk about one of those areas: site search and the broader digital experience.

Chris shared findings from SearchStax research involving 1,000 consumers nationwide. One statistic immediately stood out to me: 80% said a strong digital experience increases their trust in a health system. Another 75% use a health system’s website while making care decisions, not simply after they’ve decided where to go.

That distinction matters.

Google, ChatGPT, and other platforms are increasingly shaping awareness and consideration before a patient ever reaches your website. By the time someone arrives, they may have already researched your organization, compared options, and narrowed their choices. Your website is no longer just an information resource. It may be one of the last steps before someone schedules care.

And that makes friction expensive.

Chris’s research found that 81% of patients consider site search very important to their experience, while 60% report significant frustrations. Outdated information and difficulty finding answers can push people to call already-overburdened contact centers. More concerning, when the digital experience fails, 24% of consumers abandon the process completely. They may choose another health system or not seek care at all.

We also talked about what health systems can learn by paying attention to what patients search for on their own sites. Search queries provide direct insight into patient intent and can expose problems that internal teams may never see. Chris shared an example from UChicago Medicine, where search behavior revealed that patients couldn't intuitively find the portal login, despite careful UX planning. A relatively simple change helped increase adoption.

As AI raises expectations for immediate, relevant answers, healthcare organizations need to make their own digital experiences equally intuitive. That starts with accurate content, better insight into patient intent, and making information genuinely discoverable.

Why Listen?

For healthcare marketing and growth leaders, this conversation offers a practical look at how digital experience directly affects trust, access, and patient acquisition. Listeners will learn:

• Why the health system website increasingly serves as a critical conversion point rather than simply an information resource
• How site search data can reveal patient intent and expose gaps that traditional UX planning may miss
• Why outdated or difficult-to-find information creates both marketing and operational costs
• How AI-driven search is changing what consumers expect when they arrive on a healthcare website
• Where healthcare organizations can make relatively small digital improvements with potentially significant impact

Key Insights and Takeaways

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Note: The following AI-generated transcript is provided as an additional resource for those who prefer not to listen to the podcast recording. It has been lightly edited and reviewed for readability and accuracy.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Hello and welcome to our podcast today. I'm Stewart Gandolf, CEO of Healthcare Success. And today I'm honored to be a guest host here at the Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategy Summit. Shout out to Judy for inviting me. So thank you very much, Judy. And today I'm interviewing an industry colleague and a well-known guy, Chris Pace. He is currently VP of Digital Experience Strategy at SearchStax. Welcome, Chris. Thanks for having me. Welcome to the podcast.

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Thanks for having me. Yeah, glad to be here.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So I know of you by reputation, we've met before, but everybody knows you, I'm guessing. So please tell our audience a little bit about yourself and also the research that we're going to be discussing here today.

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Yeah, yeah. So I'm a longtime healthcare industry veteran. I've worked for two large health systems based on the West Coast. And my current role at SearchStax is really to evangelize the power of owning site search and bringing that capability to marketing teams so that they can learn about their customers, understand the intent of their patients, and then really learn how they can improve the digital experience through understanding the questions that are asked. And, you know, we often talk about other things in search, but really this is a gold mine of information that I think we're starting to see some momentum and adoption and understanding of what this means for marketing teams, knowing that the world is changing around us.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): You know, it's so funny. We're here at this great conference and there's so many really big pictures. What do we do in a media crisis and what's happening with AI? But the actual search on site is such an important issue, and we'll talk about why in just a moment. But sometimes we overlook these tactical things that have a big outsized experience, don't you find?

Chris Pace (SearchStax): I do. And, you know, we also get into our own little echo chambers of like, well, what do we do to fix it and how do we address it? And that was why, you know, we decided instead of guessing, let's ask consumers. And so that's the research that you were alluding to. And so we asked a thousand consumers across the nation, hey, what does it take to improve and enhance trust and specifically how can a digital experience address that and, more importantly, how can search help improve a digital experience? And so that's what we're gonna be talking about today, and I'm really excited to dive in.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, it's absolutely true. And it's funny, one of the things looking at the report, these things, by the way, don't surprise me at all. Having been at this for so long, I feel a little bit vindicated. So according to your research, 80% say a strong digital experience increases trust in a health system. I bet that would surprise a lot of people. Like, doesn't everything happen in the exam room, Chris?

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Well, you would think that. And yet also you were spot on that when we started to see these results come through, it was like, well, duh, well, duh. I mean, that's what I kept feeling. And, you know, it doesn't surprise me at all that 80% feel this way because the exam room and the doctor-patient experience is the most important part. It is the product that health systems and healthcare marketers have been selling. But where we meet those customers is online. And the data tells us this now, and we have the facts to prove it. And, you know, that first impression can drive the decision of whether or not they continue to go down the path to book the appointment to ultimately have the care encounter with that provider. But first is the website.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): And I talk to clients about this all the time. Like, that is the first impression. It is the front door. We'll talk about that in a moment. Everybody's checking you out, even if they're not looking for you directly, they're still checking you out online. The research further said that 75% of patients use a health system website during care decisions, not after. So what does that mean? Like, how should health systems be thinking about these kinds of issues?

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Yeah, well, what's been changing pretty rapidly is the decisions and the reputation discussions and alignment to your brand is happening outside of you. I mean, we know Google's pretty much the front door of the front door. It's like that screen door in the porch before they get to the front door. But then when a transaction needs to occur or that last mile of the engagement before they make a decision to book that appointment is really where your website comes in to shine.

And a lot of investment has been made on web technology in the last 10 years and building content and being visible outside of your website so that you can pull people in. And with the advent of ChatGPT and other LLMs, basically awareness and consideration are happening outside of your digital walls before people even get to you. So what's changed is the reason why people are there is really to book and lean in on that trust that they've kind of picked up over those digital cues that brought them there in the first place.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That is something we're seeing all across the board for our own company, for our clients. People are coming in, not just saying, "Hey," they're like, "I've done all my homework and you're the ones," right? And so you're at the critical moment. By the way, I don't know if you use this one, but I always refer to it as the two-yard line. You've worked so hard to move all the way down the field and then you drop it at the two-yard line. You go off and get a coffee or a Coke and a beer, and, like, you forget the whole thing. So on that note, your research further—and these are all my lifetime pains here, correct?

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Yeah, yeah.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, this is stuff I've been talking about for years. So 81% of patients say that site search is very important to their experience, but 60% report major frustrations. Again, I'm not surprised, but why is there this gap?

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Yeah, and those frustrations come through a couple threads the research showed. The first is outdated information. So, you know, as search capabilities have improved and discoverability of content has expanded, your incorrect information is delivered at scale faster than ever. And so, you know, you think about the vastness of a typical healthcare website. They can be 8,000 to 20,000 pages of content. And also you have siloed teams that might be publishing content across different departments. And what gets lost in the shuffle is the accuracy of information. And site search can expose the accuracy or really expose the inaccuracy of content. So that's kind of frustration point one.

The second point is, I can't find what I'm looking for. And what happens when that occurs? People pick up the phone and make a phone call. And phone calls to call centers are already overwhelming. Wait times and hold times are high. The cost of a phone call is somewhere between $15 to $25 per phone call. And so you're putting added operational burden on your contact center because of a bad digital experience. And it's no one's fault. It's just a matter of too many things to do and too little time to do it. And so having the insights to give you the cues that say, hey, these things are happening and people are looking for, you know, this specific thing, like what time's your gift shop open, or when can I visit my loved one in the hospital? I mean, those aren't revenue drivers, but those are certainly customer satisfiers. And so making sure that that information is not only accurate but available and searchable inside of your experience is crucial to delivering that trust.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So in fairness, I mean, I get it. As a hospital system, they may have thousands upon thousands of pages and things get out of date, things become inaccurate, but it is healthcare, right? We are talking about some pretty high consequences here to patient lives, patient safety, patient convenience, patient experience, not to mention the fact that AI and Google are looking for that, right? With, you know, your money or your life, you know, kinds of things. So this is an important issue. So in fairness, I get that it's hard, but it's still really important.

So, and we also talk a lot about this whole digital front door, which at least you and I talk about this and a few others maybe. So what does that mean now in terms of health systems delivering on the promise when they're trying to, you know, deal with old information or outdated information, but it still remains the digital front door?

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Yeah, so what I see the website serving a purpose as in 2026 is it's an intelligence layer and sort of the brand representation that is extendable. You know, your website is a point of where consumers meet you, but it's not the only point. And however, you have the opportunity to get more real-time data through your own website than you can see outside.

And I think that it's almost like this inside-out approach. If it's right and accessible and discoverable inside your own four walls of your front door, then therefore it is going to be syndicated across the web and, you know, become trusted and verifiable information outside of your walls. And I think you win through being visible. You know, there's a quote that, when I was at Banner Health, our former CEO there said, you know, "Visibility builds credibility, credibility builds trust." And, you know, what he meant was around people, but I believe that that is true about anything, whether it's content or about your brand or about how people show up. If you are not visible, then you can't be credible. And if you are inaccurate and don't have that credibility, then trust is eroded right out of the gate.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So one thing we didn't talk about, which I'm surprised, in our prep call and discussions, is the insights you can glean from understanding site search. And so I'm gonna throw you a curveball with something we hadn't discussed yet. Tell me about insights, like actionable insights you've learned or some of your clients have learned through site search.

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Yeah, so one of our customers is University of Chicago Medicine, and they had a really interesting use case where they had done some user experience and UI design when they launched their new patient portal. And, you know, inside of their own sort of think tank, they figured that they had the exact right place to put the portal login. And, you know, they were wondering why they weren't getting more adoption faster. And thankfully they had SearchStax's site search capability loaded on their website. And so what they were able to do is look at their search logs and see, okay, what type of questions are people asking? Because, you know, we've gone through user testing, we've done, you know, proper UI analysis, and this is saying where this should be. And what was coming up was in their search histories.

People were saying, "Where can I log into my portal?" And a simple question became an intent discovery, which then led to a deeper investigation with their consumer panel and saying, hey, we think this is the right place, but why are we not getting adoption? And it was basically, it wasn't in an intuitive place for patients. It was intuitive for digital marketers and UX designers. And so they made the move and moved the button a little closer to where the search bar was. And lo and behold, adoption went up almost overnight.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): You know, after you told me that story, I actually went to UChicago Medicine's website, and it's right in the middle is where your search bar is. And fun fact, I went to your website and I said, "Who's Chris Pace?" I gave it a test and it passed with flying colors.

Chris Pace (SearchStax): As I would hope, right? Yeah, well, it's like the old adage of, like, the cobbler's children. You know, everybody else's shoes are in great shape, but your own and your own kids maybe not. So you better have good SEO about yourself if you're gonna talk about these principles outside of yourself.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I get it. And, you know, one of the things, Chris, that we talk about as an agency with my own podcast all the time is how AI is changing everything in terms of the user journey, in terms of SEO. With AI changing how patients discover—we alluded to this a minute ago—how they discover care options externally, what does that mean for the experience that health systems need to deliver once they're actually on the site?

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Yeah, so if you think about the behaviors that we've all been trained to do, it's kind of followed how Google has changed over time. So thinking back 20 years ago—in fact, I was on a panel yesterday at HMPS, and we were talking about in the intro, Ask Jeeves, if you remember that platform. It finally is gone. And it started in the late '90s. And back then search was how basically the winners and the losers were laid out on the internet. If you weren't indexed, then you weren't found, and therefore you were irrelevant.

And so as these search engines went from covering keyword-based who, what, when, where type questions or queries, then, you know, that's kind of how people learned to search. As time has gone on and generative AI has become a thing, all of a sudden we have question-based search engines and answer-based engines that can not only cover who, what, when, where, but why and how, and then do comparisons and lead a consumer down a path to get an answer that might not involve a click to your own brand.

Now, when people do get to your site, because in healthcare we saw that 75% of consumers do end up coming to your website to do a thing, their behaviors aren't going to change. So gone are the old days of, you know, just type primary care, because yeah, you'd get a response, but is it going to be relevant to what you're looking for? So the question might be, where can I see a primary care that's near me that accepts my insurance? And that question, if it was regular old keyword-based search, it might just look for one of the terms in that sentence and try to find an answer. But now with smarter search, smarter answers, you can drill down to a very specific response that could be generated, just like a Gemini or ChatGPT response, and give the consumer what they need right there without having to click through a bunch of links and verifying that the results that they got were what they actually needed.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So this gets really incredibly intense and complex pretty quickly. So an example of this that I often talk about with clients is, for example, if somebody's looking for a varicose vein doctor, that could be a vascular surgeon, it could be an interventional radiologist, it could be a primary care. And even if it is a vascular surgeon who theoretically can do that, they may not want to. So the searches on site are getting better, but at the same time consumer expectations are just rocketing.

And I think we're seeing already the sort of diffusion of innovations where you have the pioneers or early innovators, and you have the early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards, right? That's an old story. But it's rocketing so fast. Because I love innovation. I've been leaning into AI since it first popped out, or at least in this form that we're seeing now a couple of years ago. But I'm seeing other consumers, their expectations are getting higher. And it's getting—it's like it's compressing that timeline. The words I heard were this weekend, which summarize this, is expectation inflation.

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Yeah.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): And I think that's a really good term.

Chris Pace (SearchStax): It is.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So if your website is not answering questions, they're like, wait, why not? It's not just an inconvenience, they're probably upset with you. I don't know if you have anything to say about that, but the expectations are so high and it's rapidly increasing.

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Yeah, and trying to keep up with those expectations and, like, the rate of change is really hard for health systems to keep up with because of, you know, processes or who owns what. I mean, we had a conversation a couple days ago about, you know, who owns the customer. Because in other industries, usually marketing has the stewardship of the customer through the journey, but in a service-based industry like healthcare that is dealing with high intensity, high stakes, and high-touch engagement, the ownership is kind of spread across the organization.

And so how do you keep up with it without feeling lost? And I think it's really, you know, focus on small things to get bigger wins and over time overcome it. And I think it's, you know, first, audit your content. Is your content accurate? I mean, that's a pretty simple, you know, human-in-the-loop activity that can add a lot of value. The second piece is building a speed-to-market approach on how to deliver content that's more relevant and more timely. And that's where, you know, using AI tools can help get you there, but you still have to have the empathy and tone and human in the loop to make sure that it's accurate and, you know, clinically sound.

The third piece is make it discoverable and actionable. So what might have worked for old SEO five years ago, seven years ago, now needs to be reformatted and rethought so that you are structured appropriately and discoverable through AEO, GEO and SEO, but also your own search. And so that's where, like, schema comes into play and really getting intentionally focused on the data quality, not only from a visibility standpoint, but the content quality from an accuracy standpoint. And then, you know, do small things well and then scale on top of that, I think, is kind of a logical approach to solving it.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So I guess what I would say is, you know, hospital CMOs and marketing departments have a million priorities, right? They may have technology, they may have HIPAA concerns, cybersecurity, then they break it down to each department, branding, SEO, paid search. You know, what else should we be thinking about from this research? Like, what are some of the low-hanging fruit and what is the direction this research tells us to go?

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Yeah, it's a great question. And I think, you know, when we asked the consumers what mattered to them, you know, and/or what frustrated them and what would make them walk away, a broken digital experience clearly came up high in that regard. And, you know, again, I mentioned the consequences of inaction or having inaccuracy, and that was pick up the phone and call. But the most startling data point that came through in the study is that when digital fails, 24% abandon completely. They walk away. They go to maybe another health system or they don't seek care at all.

And I think that, you know, as organizations that are in our communities that are trying to keep our communities healthy and well, there are too many people left on the sideline. And, you know, I heard a talk the other day about how powerful activation of patients that have been latent is so important because it's just revenue that's sitting there, but it's also the right thing to do to support our communities. And anything we can do to chip away at that 24% that walk away is only going to get, like, that triple win. It helps our community, it helps our health system, and it helps our employees feel like they're doing right by patients.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): You know, that's a drop-mic moment, right? When you talk about 24%. That's just, wait, what?

Chris Pace (SearchStax): That was the one where I looked at the data and I didn't say, well, duh. That was like, whoa. We have a mission here now.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Chris, I've been doing this for a few decades now, and it's like the whole process of, you know—and this has been confirmed by people like Press Ganey—the biggest source of frustration over and over and over again is making an appointment. Like, the first chance to bring in revenue, to say hello, to make someone feel comfortable at a high-stress moment of their life, oftentimes in the hospital sector, is usually a mess, from the phones to sometimes call centers to online appointment scheduling, like all of it. But this is such an important issue. But I am hopeful.

Like, technology is making it better. And it's like, because I actually thought about buying a phone center once for my clients because they're just so bad at it. But I don't know if you have any last thoughts on this part, but it's like technology is really making a big difference.

Chris Pace (SearchStax): It is. And, you know, you think of the hard-to-solve things in healthcare. I mean, right now we have physician shortages, we have access challenges, and all of those are big problems and they're macro problems. And marketers feel frustrated because they are kind of cherry-picked to be the ones to solve all of the challenges and usually not given enough resources to do it.

And I think that just given the fact that we have this opportunity to at minimum deliver a digital experience that aligns with their expectations and can give them comfort and maybe deliver some access where your health system might have it and it's just kind of untouched and there's no awareness because it's not visible, then we can start to chip away at that friction. And, you know, I think that there's a lot of people that are working hard in this industry to try and do the right thing. And just giving folks a little bit more intelligence around what their customers are saying, search is a great way to do it. It's a light lift. Usually doesn't involve a lot of IT hoops to get through in that process. And the results are endless. And again, it's that 24% I always think about that is left behind, and if we can just get them back in the system, then we all win.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Great. Chris, awesome interview. I knew it'd be fun. Thank you. Thank you for listening.

Chris Pace (SearchStax): Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, thanks everybody.