St. Elizabeth Healthcare Consumer-First Culture Built on Privacy-First Foundation

Gaining full visibility into customer journeys while protecting consumer privacy empowers the health system to move forward confidently.

// By Jane Weber Brubaker //

When Stephanie Downing joined St. Elizabeth Healthcare in March 2023 as manager of digital communications she was in for a surprise. “When I came in, I was told, ‘We removed all pixels off our website, we stopped all retargeting, and we may pull analytics.’”

Stephanie Downing, manager of digital communications at St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Northern Kentucky

St. Elizabeth wasn’t alone. The large-scale removal of tracking pixels from hospital websites across the country was a response to a rash of lawsuits in 2022 revealing that tracking pixels on hospital websites were allowing platforms like Google Analytics and Meta to hoover up vast troves of data, including protected health information (PHI). But they are not HIPAA-compliant.

While these measures safeguarded consumers’ protected health information, it was equivalent to shutting off the lights and going dark for health system marketers. Suddenly, the data they needed to personalize digital experiences and measure the results was missing. At a time when budgets are tight and every dollar counts, losing the ability to accurately connect website activity with business results is a major blow.

Downing wondered how she’d be able to do her job well without the insight these analytics tools offer.

During an eHealthcare Strategy & Trends webinar in January, Downing and co-presenter Ray Mina, vice president of marketing and product at Freshpaint, shared how St. Elizabeth regained access to critical data by implementing a privacy management platform, and how that enables the organization to fully embrace a consumer-first culture.

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