We listened to a health system’s customers door-to-door — and found exactly where its growth was leaking.
A regional community hospital system was about to commit marketing and capital budget across new service lines with no ground-truth on how local residents actually discover, choose, and travel for care. So we went and asked them — in person, in two languages.
The challenge
Leadership needed decision-grade demand data — not a guess — before committing marketing and capital budget across new service lines. The question wasn’t what they offered; it was how the community actually finds, chooses, and travels for care.
How we listened to the customer
73 in-person interviews (46 English, 27 Spanish), face-to-face in the community — not an anonymous online poll.
Unaided recall first: residents named the hospitals that came to mind before any options were shown, capturing true top-of-mind position. Every question was anchored to real recent behavior, and the sample was quota-balanced across age, gender, and city.
What we heard
Named the system first, unprompted — more than every other hospital combined.
75% used Facebook in the last 7 days and “I Googled it” was the near-universal first move; 99% trust word-of-mouth or Google reviews above every other source; 0% chose their last new doctor from an ad. But 55% of English-speaking residents would leave town for serious care — the revenue leak.
Where we told them to grow
Defend a top-of-mind lead that’s already strong. Win the digital front door — Facebook, Google, and reviews are where every one of these decisions begins. Recapture the high-acuity patients driving to metro hospitals (an estimated $2–3M/yr in net revenue). And speak to the Spanish-speaking community directly: younger, more loyal, and reached almost entirely through social and search, not broadcast.
Client cited anonymously by agreement. Behavioral figures drawn from the live 73-interview dataset; the $2–3M figure is an illustrative estimate.