Becker’s Healthcare Podcast Hillery Smith Shay on Total Experience and Digital Transformation at Children's Minnesota
Feb 24, 2026
Hillery Smith Shay, Chief Marketing and Experience Officer and SVP of Communications at Children's Minnesota, leads enterprise experience and digital transformation in pediatric care. She discusses building a systemwide total experience across digital, human, clinical and environmental touchpoints. She also covers launching Epic as a digital front door, operationalizing experience into culture, and tackling funding and unpredictability challenges.
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Total Experience Requires Five Domain Integration
- Total experience must span digital, human, clinical, environmental, and brand domains to be meaningful.
- Hillery Smith Shay built an enterprise strategy and roadmap tying continuous improvement and equity into daily leader standard work.
Promotion Followed From Building An Experience Roadmap
- Hillery promoted culture change after noticing excellent care wasn't matched by consistent experience.
- She transitioned from VP of Marketing Communications to lead experience after creating the roadmap and proving early results.
Make Epic The Foundation For A Seamless Digital Front Door
- Do implement a unified EHR and digital front door to reduce friction for families and referring clinicians.
- Children's Minnesota chose Epic and named the program Eclipse to align technology launch with experience goals and timeline.