How Texas Tech Physicians Turned Patient Voices Into Their Main Growth Engine

Patient Experience & Growth Case Study

How a patient services leader at one of West Texas’s largest academic medical groups used the RLDatix Patient Experience & Growth module to turn patient reviews into their most visible competitive advantage—with results in under two months.

The challenge: Getting the patient voice out in public

Samuel Jackson leads patient services and practice communications for Texas Tech Physicians’ 300+ providers across multiple sites. One problem kept coming back: the organization had no effective way to get patient feedback in front of prospective patients. The result: a disconnect between the care Texas Tech Physicians delivered and what any new patient searching for a provider could actually find.

Their internal satisfaction surveys weren’t built for that.And as a state academic medical center, collecting and publishing patient testimonials means clearing a gauntlet of compliance review — by the time a quote made it through, the moment had passed.

Meanwhile, new residents moving to Lubbock and rural West Texans searching for subspecialist care were going straight to Google. At the time, Texas Tech Physicians had no real presence there.

"We needed another way to collect patient feedback — in a very public, unfiltered way…Let our patients do the talking for us.”

Samuel Jackson, Patient Experience & Advocacy, Texas Tech Physicians.

The approach: Finding a way around the bottleneck

Samuel had looked at reputation management solutions before. A contract with another vendor in 2020 was cut before it produced anything — the implementation dragged, COVID hit, and the budget didn’t survive.

When Texas Tech Physicians was referred to RLDatix PX & Growth, formerly known as SocialClimb, Samuel saw a different path. Rather than routing patient stories through a compliance process, Google reviews could do the work — public, unfiltered, and continuously updated without any internal approval overhead. And unlike internal satisfaction surveys, Google reviews surface the full arc of a patient’s experience – from how they were greeted, to how their care was explained, to whether they felt heard. That’s not a marketing message. That’s patient experience made public.

His marketing and communications team wasn’t convinced. Their prediction: two years before any meaningful return. The RLDatix team had the platform live in under a month. Results came within two.

"The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago. The second best time is today,”

Samuel Jackson, Patient Experience & Advocacy, Texas Tech Physicians.

The results: A digital presence that speaks for itself

Within the first year, Texas Tech Physicians saw a 257% increase in Google reviews. But the number that tells the real story came from a side-by side comparison no one planned for.

The comparison that tells the story most clearly came from a joint venture with a county hospital. Texas Tech Physicians placed physicians at the hospital’s newly opened facility, but the county ran their own Google presence. After three years, that listing had 59 reviews at a 3.3-star rating. Texas Tech Physicians’ listing for the same location, running on RLDatix, had 1,500+ reviews at 4.9 stars.

For patients searching “primary care Lubbock” or “orthopedic surgery Lubbock,” the difference isn’t subtle.

Results at glance

• 257% increase in Google reviews in the first year after implementation
• 4.9 average star rating vs. 3.3 stars for a competing system’s listing
• 1,500+ Google reviews at flagship location vs. 59 reviews at a competing listing
• Positive ROI on a $41K targeted campaign spend within a few months

"Google has become our best marketing tool. People search ‘primary care Lubbock’ or ‘orthopedic surgery Lubbock’ — and there are our physicians, sporting beautiful 4.9-star ratings.”

Samuel Jackson, Patient Experience & Advocacy, Texas Tech Physicians

Beyond stars: How real patient feedback moves care teams

An unexpected win has been physician engagement. Samuel is direct about what physicians respond to: not percentile rankings, not composite scores — what their patients actually said.

The qualitative feedback coming through RLDatix changed that dynamic. When physicians can read specific comments from real patients on a public platform, it resonates in a way that an internal report score doesn’t. The review becomes a coaching moment, creating a feedback loop that internal surveys rarely achieve. The score becomes a conversation.

"People read the comments more than they look at star ratings,” explains Samuel. “If you read the comments at our Health and Wellness listing, they’re all going to be positive — and those comments are more impactful than the 4.9 stars.”

Funding the mission through targeted growth

Texas Tech Physicians’ mission is to serve underinsured and underserved populations across West Texas. Fulfilling that mission depends on maintaining a balanced patient panel — enough commercially insured patients to sustain the organization’s ability to provide charity care.

When Texas Tech Physicians opened a new Health and Wellness clinic south of Lubbock in a more affluent area, they used RLDatix to run a targeted marketing campaign — Google ads and direct mail campaigns aimed at commercially insured patients within a specific geographic profile. Critically, the campaigns ran within RLDatix’s HIPAA-compliant framework – allowing Texas Tech Physicians to target by insurance type and geography without exposing patient data or creating compliance risk.

The campaign spent approximately $41,000. Samuel estimates the clinic generated a positive return on investment within just a few months. That’s a return that gave Samuel concrete numbers to share with leadership – and proof that serving the community’s underserved patients didn’t have to come at the expense of organizational sustainability.

"In order to take care of our underserved patients and achieve our mission, we have to have enough commercially insured patients to keep our doors open. RLDatix helped us do that.”

Samuel Jackson, Patient Experience & Advocacy, Texas Tech Physicians

From reputation to the full patient experience picture

Texas Tech Physicians started with online reputation. What they discovered was that it was only half the story.

Real-time Google reviews showed them how patients talked about their care publicly. But understanding why patients felt that way – and catching issues before they became patterns – required something more: structured patient feedback, surfaced in real time.

That’s why Texas Tech Physicians is now consolidating their patient satisfaction surveying into RLDatix, creating a single platform where online reputation and direct feedback inform each other. Together, they form a complete patient experience picture – one that’s fast enough to act on.

"We’ve been able to catch patients who have fallen through the cracks,” Samuel explains. “Real-time feedback lets us get those issues taken care of before something bad happens or they feel neglected.”

The partnership factor

For an organization with limited bandwidth and no dedicated vendor management resources, the white-glove implementation and ongoing support have mattered as much as the platform itself.

Texas Tech Physicians wasn’t looking for a simple reputation vendor. They gave RLDatix the opportunity to serve as an enterprise patient experience partner – one that is woven into how the organization understands, measures, and improves the patient journey.

What’s kept the relationship going, in Samuel’s words, is the people.

"The people at RLDatix have really driven me to want to do more business with them. It was the fastest implementation we’ve ever had from a vendor — and the support has been fantastic.”

Samuel Jackson, Patient Experience & Advocacy, Texas Tech Physicians