Marie Olesen

Marie has dedicated her career to, “helping good doctors take better care of patients”. She had an epiphany in 1988; she couldn’t help the doctors without patient feedback. For the next six years, she implemented numerous patient care and communication systems to fulfill patient needs in her own practice, La Jolla Cosmetic Surgery Centre. Soon colleagues across the country wanted to adopt Marie’s approach. In 1994, she created the first CRM software for cosmetic surgery, Inform&Enhance®, and founded Inform Solutions, a consulting group that helped hundreds of practices deliver better patient experiences and significantly improve business outcomes. Inform was acquired by Mentor, a division of Johnson & Johnson in 2003.

Along the way, Marie realized that “patients needed help finding the good doctors”. With her husband, R. Merrel Olesen, MD, she co-authored Cosmetic Surgery For Dummies in 2004, to help consumers navigate the complexities of finding and selecting a physician. In 2011, seeing burgeoning consumer use of ratings and reviews, Marie launched RealPatientRatings®, now a component of Vizium360®. In recognition of her seminal work in technology to enhance patient satisfaction, Marie joined the Advisory Board of The Center For Services Leadership, at the William P. Carey School of Business at ASU.

Marie’s focus has been on “retail” medicine where, for decades, patient satisfaction has been a critical component of practice success. Being able to transfer and apply that knowledge and experience to other specialties where patient satisfaction is ever more critical, expected and rewarded, as it has been in aesthetic surgery for years, augments Vizium360’s mission.