Healthcare’s Digital Experience Needs to Catch Up With Its Patients

By Becky Johnson, Advertising Week Writer & Podcast Host

Amazon knows what I want to buy. Netflix has a pretty good idea of what I want to watch. I can order a kitchen table online and receive updates as it makes its way across the country, right down to how many delivery stops are left before it reaches my house.

But when I need to find a new doctor, figure out whether they’re accepting patients, determine if they’re in my insurance network, and schedule an appointment, I’m often left doing most of the work myself.

And that’s before I’ve even received any medical care.

It’s an interesting disconnect. We have become accustomed to digital experiences that make everyday tasks easier, but when it comes to something as important as our health, we’re still navigating websites that seem to require an understanding of how hospitals operate.

I recently spoke with Jaime Lyons, SVP of Engagement Strategy at Mighty Union, about the gap between what consumers expect from digital experiences and what hospitals are delivering. Our conversation covered everything from finding the right physician to AI-powered scheduling, but the underlying issue was fairly simple: healthcare organizations need to stop making patients do all the work.

Patients aren’t comparing your hospital to another hospital.

Jaime calls it “Amazon expectations,” and it’s a useful way to understand why so many hospital websites are falling short.

Consumers aren’t evaluating a hospital’s digital experience against the website of another health system. They’re comparing it to every other digital interaction they have throughout the day.

Amazon remembers our preferences. Netflix recommends content based on what we’ve watched. FedEx tells us where our packages are. We’ve become accustomed to companies using information they already have to make our lives easier.

Then we visit a hospital website and encounter medical terminology, complicated navigation, and a list of 30 physicians we’re somehow supposed to evaluate on our own.

Jaime describes these as “figure us out” websites. They’re often built around a hospital’s organizational structure, presenting departments, specialties, and information the institution wants to communicate rather than what patients are actually looking for.

The problem isn’t necessarily a lack of information. It’s that the information isn’t organized around the person who needs it.

Finding a doctor shouldn’t require a medical degree.

One of my favorite comparisons from our conversation was Jaime’s suggestion that finding a physician should work a little more like a dating app.

Think about it. Dating apps collect information about two people and use it to help identify compatible matches. They’re not simply handing someone a list of every available person and wishing them luck.

Why aren’t we approaching physician searches the same way?

Finding a doctor is an incredibly personal decision. We care about their specialty, location, availability, and whether they accept our insurance. We might also have preferences about their communication style, gender, or approach to treatment.

And anyone who has had a longtime physician retire knows how difficult it can be to replace someone you trust.

Jaime explained that making this kind of matching possible requires better structured information about both patients and clinicians. Instead of asking patients to sort through dozens of profiles, a hospital could use that information to help identify the physicians who best fit their needs.

It’s not an unreasonable expectation. We’re already using similar technology to make decisions about far less consequential things.

Stop making patients translate your language.

Another fairly basic problem is the way hospitals communicate.

Jaime used the example of “otolaryngology,” a perfectly legitimate medical term that most people would recognize more easily as ear, nose, and throat.

Healthcare is full of language that makes sense to the people working inside the industry but creates unnecessary confusion for everyone else.

And the problem goes beyond terminology.

A parent managing care for a chronically ill child has very different priorities from someone researching an elective procedure. One may need immediate answers, clear next steps, and access to multiple specialists. The other may want time to compare options and understand the procedure before making a decision.

Yet too many websites present both people with essentially the same experience.

The opportunity is to understand what different patients are trying to accomplish and make the next step obvious. That could mean simplifying language, improving physician searches, or connecting people directly to the information and services they need.

None of that requires reinventing healthcare. It requires looking at the experience from the patient’s side.

Why can I track a kitchen table but not my biopsy?

Jaime shared a personal example that brought the entire conversation into focus.

She recently ordered a kitchen table from Wayfair. Over the following eight days, she received updates about the order being processed, loaded onto a truck, moved across the country, and eventually delivered. She even knew when the delivery team was two stops away.

Compare that with an experience she had following a routine mammogram that led to a biopsy.

For approximately two weeks, she waited to learn whether the results indicated cancer. During that time, she didn’t know who was reviewing the biopsy, when she could expect results, or what the next step would be.

Fortunately, the results were benign. But the uncertainty during those two weeks was significant.

It’s a remarkable comparison. We can track a piece of furniture across the country, but during a potentially life-changing medical situation, patients may have little visibility into what’s happening.

Even something as simple as a status update could make a difference. Has the sample reached the lab? Is it being reviewed? When should results be expected? Who will contact the patient?

That information doesn’t change the diagnosis, but it can change the experience of waiting for one.

And it raises an important question for healthcare organizations: if companies can provide this level of transparency for a delivery, why aren’t we working toward the same standard for medical care?

Maybe the hospital website shouldn’t be a website anymore.

Jaime believes the next generation of healthcare digital experiences will look less like traditional websites and more like personalized tools that help patients manage their care.

Imagine logging into a secure system that already has access to your medical records, understands your insurance coverage, knows which physicians are available, and can schedule appointments.

You could explain that you’re looking for a second opinion about foot surgery, and instead of searching through multiple departments, insurance directories, and scheduling systems, the tool could help identify an appropriate physician and book the appointment.

That’s where Jaime sees a role for agentic AI, which can perform tasks rather than simply provide answers.

Of course, hospitals have a lot of work to do before that becomes a reality. Patient information, scheduling systems, marketing content, and clinical data often exist in separate places. Bringing them together securely and making that information useful requires more than adding an AI tool to an existing website.

But hospitals don’t necessarily have to overhaul everything at once.

Jaime recommends looking closely at where patients are struggling. Which pages are people leaving? Where are they repeating searches? Which tasks are they abandoning? Sometimes improving a handful of important pages or processes can make a bigger difference than redesigning an entire website.

The starting point should be understanding what patients need and using the information the organization already has to make those tasks easier.

Healthcare has the information. Now make it useful.

Hospitals have access to extraordinary amounts of information about their patients, providers, services, and operations. The challenge is connecting that information in ways that actually improve the patient experience.

We shouldn’t need to understand a hospital’s organizational chart to find care. We shouldn’t have to call multiple offices to figure out whether a physician accepts our insurance. And we certainly shouldn’t have less information about a medical test than we do about a package arriving at our front door.

The technology to create better experiences is developing quickly, but the goal is much more straightforward.

Make healthcare easier to navigate. Communicate in language people understand. And stop expecting patients to do work that the organization could be doing for them.

Because when someone is dealing with their health, they already have enough to worry about.