Case Study
How Geisinger Matched Its Communications to Its Clinical Reputation
Marketing Strategy
Branding
Thought Leadership
Content and Creative
Public Relations
How Scribewise Supported Trust-Building Healthcare Communications
- Functioned as an extension of Geisinger’s communications and media team, providing editorial capacity and judgment
- Delivered journalistic healthcare content aligned to news cycles, without sacrificing accuracy or credibility
- Supported earned media efforts, owned channels and campaigns through a single, cohesive content stream
- Developed a maternity-focused content hub to support long-term patient relationships
Scribewise partnered with Geisinger Health System, one of the nation’s top healthcare providers, to design and implement a media-focused communications and content program aligned with its clinical reputation. By producing clear, journalistic content across service lines and life stages, Scribewise helped Geisinger translate complex healthcare decisions into credible narratives.
The Situation: Making Proactive Healthcare More Accessible
Geisinger is widely recognized as one of the leading healthcare systems in the country, known for clinical excellence, innovation and scale. Across central and northeastern Pennsylvania, it serves as the primary healthcare option for millions of patients.
With that position comes responsibility. Patients, media and communities expect Geisinger to explain complex healthcare topics clearly, accurately and credibly, especially at moments when families are making high-stakes decisions about care.
To meet that challenge, Geisinger had built a sizable in-house communications and media team. The team was actively telling physician and patient stories, pitching local media and supporting campaigns across service lines and regions. What Geisinger needed was additional editorial capacity to consistently produce high-quality content at a newsroom pace without sacrificing accuracy or credibility.
The Challenge: Maintaining Clarity While Keeping Pace With Media
Healthcare content leaves little margin for error. For a leading health system, clarity is not optional—it’s part of the organization’s public responsibility. Information must be clinically accurate and accessible without sounding generic or promotional.
Geisinger’s internal teams were operating at full capacity. Media specialists were embedded across regions, traveling between hospitals, cultivating relationships with reporters and managing day-to-day coverage. The challenge was sustaining a consistently high standard of clarity and credibility across service lines, regions and moments of public attention to fuel campaigns around growth priorities.
At the same time, content needed to be produced quickly, often in step with news cycles and real-world events. That pressure was compounded by a familiar organizational reality: The Communications and IT teams operated on different timelines. Content could be created quickly, but publishing it to the website introduced delays, creating friction when timely, trusted information mattered most.
The Differentiator: Journalism Built for Healthcare Decision-Making
Scribewise operated as an extension of Geisinger’s communications team, applying editorial judgment and speed to deliver consistent, news-ready content across channels.
Geisinger was not looking for high-volume content or an SEO-driven model. The priority was credibility.
Senior communications leaders came from television journalism and brought a clear point of view on quality. Content needed to explain complex healthcare topics clearly for nonclinical audiences, elevate clinical expertise without overexplaining and withstand scrutiny from both reporters and patients.
Building the Program: Sustaining Trust Through Consistency
Rather than a single campaign or isolated initiative, Scribewise helped formalize an editorial system to support Geisinger’s ongoing communications needs.
Editorial infrastructure built for speed
Scribewise supported Geisinger with a steady flow of content across service lines and health topics. Editorial planning balanced known priorities while remaining flexible enough to respond to timely news and cultural moments.
When relevant stories emerged, Scribewise conducted research and interviews, turning content around quickly, helping Geisinger stay visible and credible as conversations were unfolding.
Scribewise also worked with members of both the marketing and IT teams to help formalize an approval process that streamlined publishing, reducing delays between content creation and release.
Content designed to travel across channels
Content was developed with distribution in mind from the outset. Once published, articles were frequently pitched by Geisinger’s media team to local newspapers and television stations, particularly in regional markets where timely, credible healthcare coverage carried real weight.
In addition to articles, Scribewise produced:
- Monthly media tip sheets with concise, pitch-ready story angles
Physician PSAs tied to major awareness moments - Service line and procedure-focused explainers that supported campaigns and media outreach
This approach enabled a single stream of content to support owned, earned and social channels without creating parallel production efforts or fragmenting the message.
A maternity-focused content hub to attract long-term patient relationships
One of several focused initiatives within the broader program was the creation of a maternity-focused content hub spanning key stages of care. The strategy reflected a clear insight: Women make the majority of healthcare decisions for their families, and the choice of an OB/GYN often marks the start of a long-term relationship with a health system.
Scribewise worked closely with Geisinger’s marketing team and web partners to develop clear, audience-focused content spanning family planning, pregnancy, postpartum care and early pediatric decision-making, positioning maternity as the entry point to a longer-term relationship with the health system.
Topics included gestational diabetes, genetic testing, mental health and birth planning, each paired with practical calls to action such as finding a provider, enrolling in classes or scheduling an appointment.
The Results: Content That Reinforced Trust at Scale
Within three months of launch, articles from the maternity hub ranked as the top three most-viewed pages on Geisinger’s website.
More broadly, the content Scribewise produced became a core input to Geisinger’s communications ecosystem. It supported local media coverage, reinforced trust with patients and helped make complex healthcare decisions easier to navigate.
The impact was evident in how the content was consistently reused across channels and picked up by media, reinforcing a program that remained durable as Geisinger continued to grow.
What’s Next: Trust as a Long-Term Growth Strategy
The work with Geisinger reinforced a core reality for leading health systems: Trust is built long before a patient ever needs care. It’s built through repeated, reliable touchpoints that help patients navigate decisions with confidence. While many health systems spam the marketplace with expensive television advertising, Geisinger opted for the more sustainable content-driven approach.
By prioritizing clarity, accuracy and speed, Scribewise helped Geisinger show up consistently across channels, creating familiarity at the moments when patients and families were deciding where to turn.