Fewer Friction Points, Better Care: Optimizing Your Healthcare Brand as PX Strategy

TL;DR: By unifying their brand and eliminating friction across search, listings, and scheduling, Tufts Medicine made it easier for patients to find and book care. The result: a 36% lift in provider search usage, and a 711% surge in online appointments.

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Every patient’s journey to care begins long before they reach a check-in desk.

Most often, it starts with a search and takes a meandering path to ‘appointment scheduled.’ Along the way, patients encounter dozens of digital touchpoints that shape their perception of your care. Each one – a Google result, provider profile, location page, social media post, review, or a scheduling flow – creates or reduces friction.

At Tufts Medicine, this truth became a catalyst for change. Their Senior Director of Marketing and Digital Strategy, Susie Germer, joined us at the 2025 Yext Healthcare Marketing Forum to talk about their journey. She explained, “We have a lot of disparate systems and facilities. After auditing access flows, we realized that unless we invested time and resources into unifying our digital presence, we’d miss opportunities to help patients find the right care.”

Mapping data structure to patient-defined pathways

Tufts Medicine “one system” initiative began by unifying 10 websites across five different CMS platforms. The goal? Creating a ‘digital front door’ that mirrors how patients actually look for care, versus how departments are organized internally.

Germer said, “Patients don’t think in terms of brand architecture. They think, ‘I need a dermatologist near me.’ We realized our visibility strategy had to match that mindset.” The process was painful, but the effort paid off. Tufts saw a 36% increase in provider search usage and a 711% increase in online booked appointments, representing millions in estimated new patient revenue.

To make sure no patient is missed, Tufts Medicine also began monitoring brand visibility and sentiment across AI-driven search platforms – a move that allows their team to measure if, and how, they show up on emerging discovery channels like Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT.

Using data consistency to earn patient and AI trust

When every digital channel tells the same story – same name, same specialty, same hours – patients (and AI) feel confident. But before Tufts’ transformation, the organization had eight disparate websites and three separate physician databases, each one describing providers differently.

“Cleaning up data across 70+ healthcare publishers was not glamorous work,” Germer noted. “But it was essential. Once we had a single source of truth for providers and locations, patient access and trust immediately improved.”

Germer’s team uses Yext Listings to keep 1,050 listings across 70+ platforms – from Google Business Profiles to Healthgrades to insurance directories – accurate and up-to-date in real-time. With the right tooling in place, the team was able to update 88,642 location and provider profiles across hundreds of publishers.

Seamless access equals more appointments

After optimizing their on-site provider search with support from Yext partner, Phase2, Tufts Medicine integrated scheduling data into their global site and enabled real-time appointment visibility.

“Our goal was to make scheduling intuitive,” Germer said. “If a patient finds a provider in one click, they should be able to book in one more.” Since launch, the new “Find a Doctor” experience has driven significant traffic growth across high-intent searches – with search terms like “orthopedic surgeon” and “weight wellness” seeing increases of 167% and 442% year-over-year, respectively.

Reputation’s role in patient experience

Data management is critical – but so is reputation. With 1,050 reviews monitored and managed across platforms using Yext Reviews, the organization uses patient feedback as both a quality signal and a trust-building tool. Thoughtful responses are crafted using HIPAA-safe protocols, and all patient experience data is fed back into operations.

“Reviews tell us exactly where friction exists,” Germer shared. “And fixing those friction points improves the patient experience, both online and in-person.”

From first search to follow-up, patient access defines care

For patients, being able to easily find and access care and feel confident in their choice sets the tone for what patients can expect from your organization, and Tufts’ story proves that digital access is the patient experience. Every accurate listing, fast load time, and easy booking link reduces friction and builds loyalty.

“We went from being reactive to being proactive,” Germer said. “Every data fix, every new integration, and every review response is one more way we’re improving patient experience – before the doctor even enters the equation.”

Patients aren’t waiting for your team to modernize. They’re choosing the systems that already have. Visit the Yext healthcare hub to learn exactly what it takes to compete (and win) in the AI era.