The hidden costs of fragmented patient data

Healthcare and life sciences organizations today face a hidden, but costly, challenge: fragmented patient data.

information is often scattered across multiple systems—EHRs, CRMs, patient portals, engagement platforms, and data warehouses. Even when these systems collect similar information, differences in how data is stored, classified, and governed make it nearly impossible to get a clear, unified view of each patient or member.

This “data duality”—the separation of sensitive clinical data from broader engagement and communication data—creates ripple effects across the organization.

Engagement teams struggle to deliver clear, trusted communications because they can’t reliably segment audiences or know which touchpoints are permitted. Compliance teams wrestle with inconsistent consent records and the risk of violating HIPAA or state-level privacy laws. Meanwhile, patients and members may receive duplicate, conflicting, or irrelevant messages that erode trust.

The result is a cycle of inefficiency, missed opportunities to strengthen relationships, and heightened regulatory and reputational risk.

The cost of fragmented data

Fragmented patient data carries real, measurable costs for healthcare and life sciences organizations. These costs span financial, operational, and compliance dimensions—and often go unnoticed until they result in major inefficiencies or risk exposure.

Efficiency costs

• Duplicated outreach: Conflicting or overlapping communications waste budget while frustrating patients.
• Missed engagement opportunities: Without a unified view of patient consent and preferences, organizations struggle to deliver timely reminders, wellness resources, or program updates that patients actually want.
• Platform overhead: Maintaining multiple disconnected systems—EHRs, CRMs, engagement platforms, and data warehouses—creates significant operational overhead in licensing fees, integrations, and manual reconciliation.

Operational costs

• Manual reconciliation: Teams spend hours reconciling inconsistent records across systems, slowing down outreach programs and consuming valuable staff time.
• Difficulty scaling engagement: Without unified consent, it’s nearly impossible to scale trusted, compliant communications to large patient populations.
• Cross-functional inefficiency: Engagement, patient services, and compliance teams often work with conflicting datasets—slowing decision-making and limiting coordinated action.

Compliance risks

• Fragmented consent records: Disconnected systems make it difficult to track patient consent reliably, raising the risk of HIPAA or state-level violations.
• Audit vulnerabilities: Without unified governance, responding to audits is slow, error-prone, and resource-intensive.
• Reputational damage: Compliance failures don’t just risk fines—they can erode patient trust and confidence, impacting long-term loyalty and engagement.

How fragmentation impacts patient and member experiences

Data fragmentation doesn’t just create internal headaches—it directly affects patient and member experiences, which in turn shape trust, satisfaction, and long-term engagement.

Conflicting or duplicate communications

Patients may receive overlapping or contradictory messages—for example, duplicate reminders from both a health plan and a hospital, or offers for programs they’ve opted out of. This confusion undermines confidence in the organization’s ability to manage their data responsibly.

Erosion of trust through inconsistent consent

Without a unified view of preferences, patients may receive communications they explicitly declined—or miss updates they consented to. Inconsistent experiences diminish trust and increase the likelihood of disengagement.

Generic, impersonal experiences

Fragmented data prevents organizations from tailoring outreach in a meaningful, compliant way. Patients feel like “just another data point,” rather than individuals whose preferences are understood and respected.

Indirect impacts on outcomes

Poor coordination between systems can affect patient follow-up, wellness program enrollment, or adherence to care plans—ultimately limiting both patient outcomes and organizational reputation.

Root causes of fragmented health and patient data

Understanding why patient and marketing data becomes fragmented is critical to addressing the problem. In healthcare and life sciences, fragmentation typically stems from a combination of technological, organizational, and procedural factors.

1. Multiple disconnected systems

Healthcare organizations rely on a variety of specialized systems to manage patient information and marketing efforts, including:

• EHRs (Electronic Health Records): Store sensitive clinical information about patients
• CRMs (Customer Relationship Management systems): Track interactions with patients, members, and healthcare providers
• Marketing clouds and automation platforms: Manage campaigns, emails, and digital outreach
• Data warehouses: Aggregate data for reporting and analytics

While each system serves a distinct purpose, they often don’t communicate seamlessly with each other. This creates gaps, inconsistencies, and duplicate records that make it difficult to get a clear, unified view of a patient or member.

2. Absence of a unified consent management framework

Even when data is collected consistently, fragmented consent practices can still cause systematic issues. For example:

• Different systems may capture opt-in and opt-out preferences separately, creating conflicting records
• Consent may not be updated in real-time across all platforms, leading to situations where patients receive communications they didn’t authorize
• Lack of a centralized governance model makes it difficult to track, audit, and enforce consent across the organization, increasing compliance risk

3. Organizational silos between teams

Fragmentation isn’t just a technology problem. Organizational structure plays a big role, as different teams come to the table with different goals, motivations, and challenges.

• Marketing teams: Focus on engagement and outreach, often prioritizing campaign effectiveness over regulatory alignment
• Patient services / Care teams: Focus on patient experience, clinical outcomes, and operational efficiency
• Compliance / Privacy teams: Ensure that patient data handling meets HIPAA and other regulatory requirements

When these teams operate in isolation, it’s easy for inconsistent practices to emerge. Each team may maintain its own data records and processes, further entrenching fragmentation and making coordinated action difficult.

4. Legacy systems and integration challenges

Many healthcare organizations still rely on legacy platforms that were never built to communicate seamlessly with modern marketing, analytics, or patient engagement tools. These older systems may store critical patient data, consent records, or marketing interactions in formats that are difficult to extract or standardize.

The consequences of relying on legacy systems include:

• Data gaps: Important patient or prospect information may be missing or inconsistently captured across platforms
• Delayed campaigns: Marketing and patient outreach initiatives can be slowed by manual reconciliation or patchwork integrations
• Increased risk: Inconsistent or incomplete consent tracking can expose organizations to compliance violations and reputational damage

Ultimately, legacy system challenges compound the problems caused by organizational silos and disconnected data, making it difficult for healthcare organizations to fully realize the benefits of unified consent and preference management.

The opportunity: Integrated consent and preference management

Fragmentation doesn’t have to be the status quo. Healthcare organizations have an opportunity to take control of the data problem at its root: patient consent and preferences.

By consolidating this information across clinical and engagement systems, leaders can establish a single source of truth for governance—one that spans the patient journey from the exam room to the inbox. The benefits are clear and measurable:

• Compliant engagement at scale: With a centralized system, every message, reminder, or outreach program is automatically aligned with patient consent. No more uncertainty about whether a campaign is HIPAA-compliant or whether preferences are up to date. Patients receive communications they’ve authorized—across email, SMS, apps, or portals—without risk of overstepping.
• Stronger trust: Trust is hard-won and easily lost. By consistently honoring patient choices, organizations demonstrate respect for privacy. Over time, this builds confidence in the institution, reinforcing loyalty and encouraging patients to stay engaged in care programs.
• Operational efficiency: Automating consent workflows removes the need for manual checks, spreadsheet reconciliations, or ad-hoc IT fixes. Engagement programs that once took weeks to validate can launch in days, giving teams the speed and agility to respond to patient needs and market dynamics.
• Reliable insights: Fragmented systems make it nearly impossible to generate accurate reports on patient engagement. With unified governance, analytics become a dependable resource for decision-making. Leaders can see which programs are working, identify gaps in outreach, and make data-driven choices that improve outcomes and reduce waste.

Taken together, unified consent and preference management transforms governance from a compliance obligation into a strategic advantage—one that safeguards patient data, streamlines operations, and builds the foundation for long-term trust.

How Transcend can help

Transcend’s Consent and Preference Management provides healthcare organizations with the technology and governance framework to unify, automate, and manage patient and marketing data across siloed systems.

With Transcend, organizations can:

• Unify consent across the full data ecosystem: Centralize patient and prospect consent from EHRs, CRMs, marketing clouds, and other platforms into one platform. This eliminates conflicting records and ensures that all teams are working from the same data.
• Get a real-time view of patients consent and preference choices: Dynamically manage millions of user consent and preference choices in real time, ensuring campaigns, reminders, and communications respect consent at every touchpoint. This reduces manual effort and prevents errors that could expose the organization to risk.
• Reduce compliance risk: Maintain a single, audit-ready source of truth for consent and preferences. This mitigates HIPAA and regulatory exposure, simplifies audits, and ensures that patient privacy is consistently protected.
• Enable personalization at scale: With unified data and consent, healthcare organizations can safely power personalized campaigns, improve patient engagement, and deliver tailored content across multiple channels, all without compromising trust.

By consolidating consent and preferences in one platform, Transcend transforms a fragmented data landscape into a foundation for growth, operational efficiency, compliance, and patient trust.