Geisinger's new marketing chief plans to boost the digital patient experience and leverage the Risant Health partnership while being careful with AI.
Hernando Ruiz-Jimenez was named chief marketing and communications officer of the Danville, Pa.-based health system in January after previously leading marketing at New York City-based NewYork-Presbyterian and food and insurance companies.
Becker's caught up with Mr. Ruiz-Jimenez about his goals for his tenure as chief marketing officer and his approach to digital patient experience and AI.
Question: What are your hopes and plans for your new role at Geisinger? What will success look like?
Hernando Ruiz-Jimenez: I'm thrilled to have joined Geisinger. It's a health organization with over 100 years of history, and it's very well respected in the industry and also very innovative. I feel like a marathon runner who has been preparing for this race all my life, and I'm looking forward to working with the teams at Geisinger.
Success will be two things: How do we elevate our marketing capabilities to drive growth and serve our patients and members? How do we cement our reputation as a leader in the industry and value-based care?
Q: What unique marketing opportunities does the Geisinger brand present?
HRJ: Geisinger is an integrated system. We have both a clinical enterprise and a health plan, and we have a great opportunity to impact the lives of both patients and members in Pennsylvania.
I always think of brands as promises, and promises are based on trust. If we can keep the trust of our patients and members and deliver high-quality care with a great patient experience, then we can actually improve their lives and the lives of their families. For a lot of us who work in non-for-profit healthcare, this is the reason we do it. It's part of the mission-driven work we do.
We can show our market and the country that we can deliver — and this is actually very unique — world-class and highly advanced clinical care in rural communities. There's always this impression that you can only get the best care if you're in the big cities. Yes, we do it in some big cities like Scranton, but most of our care happens in rural communities, and we are providing them with world-class care in their communities.
And the last piece of this is we're also a teaching hospital, so we're preparing future doctors and nurses, still with a strong focus on community.
Q: What is the biggest challenge in healthcare marketing nowadays? How will you overcome it?
HRJ: Hospital systems are experiencing very high levels of patients and low margins. So as a marketing department, how do we help? How can we support growth through new patients? But also, how can we support the system by investing in marketing tools that help our patients navigate healthcare and also keep them healthy? How can we make sure they're complying with their medication usage, they're getting follow-up care, they're getting preventive screenings?
We cannot market everything. We may not have access. We may have gaps. So that's the opportunity to impact both the business and our patients, pivoting to more of a value-based care approach.
Q: How do you intend to boost digital engagement at Geisinger?
HRJ: It's critical. It's table stakes. We need to provide both our patients and members with access to what they need, when they need it.
Navigating healthcare is complex, and at times it can even be scary. So how can we have tools to overcome that?
At Geisinger, we have something that doesn't necessarily happen everywhere. We have ownership, in marketing, of member and patient portals, and we can use those alongside our traditional marketing tools. There's a consumer mindset in the creation and design of these portals. We're thinking about adoption. We're thinking about ease of use. And then how do we use our traditional digital marketing tools to drive this digital experience?
Q: How will AI play a role in your marketing strategy at Geisinger?
HRJ: AI is tricky. AI right now is at an inflection point. We are in this place where we're not really sure where it's going to go. AI has been there for a while. We were talking about neural networks in the '90s, and that's where it went from science fiction to science. And then, in 2012 with AlexNet and visual recognition and predictive modeling, AI suddenly started to be a reality that affected content algorithms, how we place media. Chatbots are another example of something we've been doing for a while.
The big question now is, with large language models and generative AI, how are we going to use that? In healthcare, we have to be careful, because privacy of our patients is critical, and that's one thing we haven't been able to work around.
When you look at the huge impact AI can have, the medical enterprise is going to drive innovation there. From a marketing perspective, we are trying to figure out how we do it. And again, it's privacy. And we started by talking about brands as promises and promises are based on trust: We need to make sure we don't misplace the trust our patients and members put on us by using these tools.
Q: Geisinger was acquired by Kaiser Permanente in 2024 to join value-based care nonprofit Risant Health. How does being part of that organization affect your marketing strategy?
HRJ: Geisinger is a standalone brand. Risant Health is going to open the door to a lot of opportunities. Risant is a relatively new endeavor, and I don't think we've tapped into all the possibilities behind it, but the plan is that Geisinger remains a brand, and this opens up opportunities for synergies. We're excited about where that could take us.