Mass General Brigham's 3-person research team runs patient-backed decisions for 82,000 employees – at speed
By building an owned patient research audience on Fuel Cycle, Mass General Brigham turned a lean insights function into an always-on strategic resource for the entire organization.
About Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham is the largest healthcare system in New England – five academic medical centers, a network of community hospitals and urgent care clinics spanning four states, and 82,000 employees. The Consumer Insights and Market Research team operates like an internal consulting firm, fielding simultaneous questions from digital patient experience, business development, health equity, international marketing, external communications, and patient experience – with just three people.
The Challenge
Accessing reliable patient perspective at the speed and depth the organization needed was difficult. Recruiting fresh sample for every study was slow, costly, and produced respondents with no prior context about MGB. When findings were presented to clinical leaders and executive stakeholders, audience quality wasn't a nice-to-have – it was the thing that made the work credible.
An owned patient audience that's always research-ready
In 2019, Mass General Brigham launched Patient Voice – a dedicated owned research audience of validated patients. In 2023, the program migrated to Fuel Cycle, giving the team a single research infrastructure to manage audience engagement, run multi-method studies, and segment members for specialized work without standing up a new recruitment effort for every project.
Every member is CRM-recruited, which means the team knows exactly who is in the audience. Every respondent is a verified patient – a foundation that matters when findings go to the Chief Medical Officer.
- CRM-recruited audience – every respondent is a verified patient, not a panel stranger
- No monetary incentives needed – members participate because they have a genuine stake in the health system's success
- Quarterly newsletters close the loop – showing members their feedback shaped real decisions – sustaining engagement in a way that gift cards never could
- Condition-specific cohorts built on demand – cancer patients, neurological conditions, mental health – no new recruitment required
Research capabilities across every methodology
Because the audience is owned and always available, the team can apply any methodology without starting from scratch.
Scale does not have to mean slow. We can put something in on a Monday and we can get over 1,000 responses by Wednesday. There's just not a lot of other options for research that enable us to get that level of scale and patient feedback that quickly to help inform decisions.
Research that reached decisions before they were made
The results that mattered most weren't participation rates – they were decisions changed.
From lean team to always-on research function
With Fuel Cycle, a three-person team at one of the most complex health systems in the country operates research at the speed executive stakeholders require. Every study runs on an audience that already knows MGB – verified, engaged, and ready to respond.
The program runs without monetary incentives because Patient Voice members have a genuine stake in the health system's success. Quarterly newsletters that close the feedback loop sustain engagement in a way that gift cards never could.
Research reaches the right stakeholders fast enough to actually influence the decision – not arrive after it has already been made.