More Empathy, Fewer Spreadsheets, Better Cancer Care
How the University of Maryland Medical System leveraged journey mapping to align marketing with the patient experience.
// By Amanda Green //
The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) operates 11 hospitals, more than 150 care sites, and provides greater than 25 percent of inpatient care in the state of Maryland. It’s an anchor in the Baltimore community, serving some of the state’s most needs-based patients. Baltimoreans have several choices — and great need — for cancer care. The city’s incidence of cancer is higher than the rest of Maryland and the national average.
By late 2026, UMMS will double the footprint of the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center with the completion of the Roslyn and Leonard Stoler Center for Advanced Medicine, a state-of-the-art complex that will provide inpatient and outpatient services.

Jim McMahon, vice president of marketing and communications, University of Maryland Medical System
Ahead of the opening, UMMS wanted to examine the current breast cancer patient experience at the Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center (UMGCCC) and how it impacts patient and referring provider choice. Jim McMahon, vice president of marketing and communications at UMMS, suggested patient journey mapping.
“The natural next question was, ‘Why is this idea coming from marketing, not patient experience or operations?’” recalls McMahon. “This is why: Marketers make a brand promise at the top that needs to be paid off at the experience level. If that doesn’t happen, we erode consumer confidence and lose patients’ trust.”
Read on to learn how a leadership team of cancer experts came together to create a shared understanding of the patient experience, and how hearing directly from patients refined their perceptions and guided the changes they made.