What Is Patient Experience? Strategies to Improve It in 2026

Improving patient experience means making every stage of care easier to access and understand. Even high-quality clinical care can leave patients dissatisfied when long waits, unclear instructions, inconsistent communication, or limited access to staff get in the way.

These barriers can also prevent patients from receiving care. According to McKinsey’s 2026 healthcare consumer research, only 30% of respondents said they always received the care they needed. Among those who delayed or went without care, 24% cited long wait times as a barrier.

Healthcare organizations can improve patient experience by reducing these barriers, sharing clear and timely information, training staff to communicate with empathy, and acting on patient feedback. This guide explains what patient experience means, how to measure it, and 10 practical ways to improve it in 2026.

What Is Patient Experience?

Patient experience includes every interaction a patient has with the healthcare system, from scheduling an appointment to receiving clinical care and follow-up support. It covers interactions with health plans, doctors, nurses, administrative staff, hospitals, health care providers, and other healthcare facilities. Together, these interactions influence the patient’s relationship with the organization.

Clinical care and onsite interactions play an important role in patient experience, but communication and technology are just as important. They affect how easily patients can contact their provider, schedule appointments, receive updates, access self-service tools, and communicate through phone, text, chat, or patient portals.

A patient-centered care model considers these needs alongside the patient’s values, preferences, and clinical needs. Patient experience examines whether specific parts of the journey happened as expected. For example:

• Did the patient receive clear follow-up instructions through their preferred channel?
• Was it easy to schedule or reschedule an appointment?
• Could the patient reach the right department without repeated transfers?
• Did the patient receive timely reminders and updates?
• Could staff access relevant context without asking the patient to repeat information?

Example of a positive patient experience

A patient’s impression of a healthcare organization usually begins before the clinical visit. Consider how two different approaches to scheduling the same follow-up appointment can affect the patient experience.

Task-focused approach	Patient-focused approach
A patient calls to schedule a follow-up appointment and waits on hold without receiving an update.	The patient receives a callback option instead of waiting on hold.
The agent asks for information the patient has already provided.	The agent can view relevant interaction details and confirms the information already available.
The agent books the appointment without explaining the next steps.	The agent confirms the appointment, explains the next steps, and asks about communication preferences.
Result: The appointment is booked, but the process feels repetitive and frustrating.	Result: The appointment is booked with less effort, and the patient feels informed and supported.

Both approaches complete the same task, but the patient-focused approach reduces effort, provides clarity, and creates a more positive experience before care begins.

Patient Experience vs. Patient Satisfaction

People often use patient experience and patient satisfaction interchangeably, but they measure different aspects of care. Understanding the difference is important when healthcare organizations want to improve patient experience and determine which parts of the patient journey need attention.

Patient experience measures whether specific events occurred during care. Patient satisfaction measures whether the care a patient received met their personal expectations.

The table below shows the key differences between patient experience and patient satisfaction.

Patient experience	Patient satisfaction
Focuses on what happened during care	Focuses on how the patient felt about the care
Measures specific interactions and processes	Measures whether care met personal expectations
Uses questions such as: Did the doctor explain your treatment clearly?	Uses questions such as: How satisfied were you with the explanation?
Can be compared across healthcare organizations using standardized surveys	Can vary based on each patient’s expectations and preferences
Points to specific areas that need improvement	Shows the patient’s overall perception of care

Two patients may receive the same care but report different satisfaction levels because they had different expectations. By measuring patient experience separately, healthcare organizations can find specific problems involving communication, access, wait times, or follow-up and make targeted improvements.

Why Is Improving Patient Experience Important?

Improving patient experience can benefit patients and healthcare organizations in several ways. It can support better patient outcomes while strengthening the organization’s financial performance through retention and loyalty:

• Builds patient trust: Clear communication and respectful care strengthen patients’ confidence in their providers.
• Increases patient engagement: Patients who feel heard are more likely to participate in care decisions and ask questions.
• Supports treatment adherence: Clear instructions make it easier for patients to understand and follow their treatment plans.
• Promotes patient safety: Timely communication and coordinated care can reduce misunderstandings that contribute to medical errors.
• Improves patient retention: Positive interactions can encourage patients to remain with the same healthcare provider.
• Reduces complaints: Better communication and follow-up can prevent common frustrations from escalating.
• Highlights operational issues: Patient feedback can identify problems involving wait times, access, communication, and care coordination.
• Raises satisfaction: More responsive and respectful care can improve patient satisfaction and strengthen patient satisfaction scores over time.

10 High-Impact Strategies to Improve Patient Experience

Below are some high-impact strategies that can help improve patient experience for organizations.

1. Improve scheduling and access to care

Experience delivery starts when a patient contacts a medical facility. Some contact for regular appointments, while others expect urgent and priority care for critical issues. You need to serve both situations well.

Dr. Bruce A. Scott, AMA President, says, “It’s becoming increasingly challenging to access a physician. It’s almost at a crisis level.” As a responsible healthcare facility, you need to address this.

Implement open-access or same-day scheduling for such urgent issues. This shows you care, and when it matches how you deal with such cases, it translates into experience.

When receiving regular care, give customers the flexibility to self-schedule through IVR, chat, or patient portals. Make the customer’s experience as flexible as possible.

2. Make communication human and clear

“A good scalpel makes a better surgeon. Good communication makes a better doctor.” Dr. Josh Umbehr notes the importance of clear communication in an article on TechCrunch.

According to statistics, up to 80% of the information patients receive in a clinical visit is immediately forgotten. Doctors and nurses must ensure patients follow their medical advice.

Use methods like “teach-back” to ensure patients have a clear understanding of the care you’re offering. Offer updates during long wait periods or call hold times. Provide written summaries, medication guidance, and discharge instructions that patients can review later. These simple steps can reduce confusion after a visit.

Most importantly, train all patient-facing teams to listen, including call center agents, front-desk employees, and clinical staff. For example, strong physician communication may involve giving patients time to explain their concerns, maintaining appropriate eye contact, and checking whether they have questions. Call center agents can apply the same communication skills by listening without interrupting, confirming key details, and explaining the next steps clearly.

These practices are essential for building trust. Research shows that patients get only about 11 seconds to explain their concerns before being interrupted by physicians.

3. Train all staff on empathy and de-escalation

Your staff needs to empathize with customers, and this empathy must be ingrained in their behavior, caregiving, and all patient interactions with customers within and outside of your facility. Patients may already be dealing with pain, uncertainty, or stress, so a calm and respectful response is crucial.

Dr. Peter Pronovost says, “Patients don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care.” This is highly relevant in the context of modern healthcare initiatives. Show patients that you care by displaying the empathy expected of you. This is what a patient expects.

If a patient shows signs of frustration, coach your team on responding empathetically. To do this, hold regular patient experience huddles to review wins and areas of concern, and practices that staff can apply with greater consistency.

Check out healthcare call center best practices to coach your team effectively.

4. Build a culture of follow-up and accountability

Electronic health records (EHR) are used to call patients back about labs or open questions. If some patients miss an appointment, don’t show up, or simply reschedule, treat them respectfully and understand barriers. Bring empathy into these interactions, as patients might come back later, but they’ll carry how you made them feel for a long time.

If your doctors or caregivers make commitments, make sure they follow through. For example, if you say, “I’ll call you in a week to check on that,” you must adhere to what you promised. Reliable follow-up shows that the care team remains invested in the patient’s health and can support quality care beyond the appointment.

5. Use digital tools to empower patients

In one survey, 41% of patients said they would switch providers over a poor digital experience. This could be due to difficulty with online forms, a lack of online appointment scheduling or bill pay, or other factors, and one in five have already done so.

Delivering a decent digital experience has become indispensable. To do this, you need self-service solutions like IVR, mobile apps, or portals to check results or reschedule. Tools powered by artificial intelligence can also handle routine requests, summarize conversations, and direct patients to the right team while staff retain control over clinical decisions.

Even a healthcare CRM can help you provide adequate care. Communication systems, portals, and apps integrate with a healthcare CRM, giving you a unified platform to manage all patient communication.

See if you can automate follow-ups a few days after a patient visits your facility. Give patients options to get a call back and help them avoid being on hold.

6. Make care coordination seamless

Patients frequently navigate multiple providers, departments, and care settings, and they feel the pain when care is not coordinated. In a survey of over 1,000 patients, 42% spent six minutes or more recounting their medical history at every appointment. The data isn’t integrated, making this a significant challenge in streamlining a patient’s experience across different medical facilities.

Matt Hollingsworth, the CEO of Carta Healthcare, says, “One thing that I think is completely unconscionable is that you can’t share your data with other care providers when you want to get better care, and people get frustrated about that constantly.”

Implement an interoperable EHR system and set a “tell it once” policy to ensure seamless coordination. This will alleviate the burden. Some leading organizations assign care navigators or case managers to help coordinate appointments, especially for patients with complex needs. These navigators help schedule care across specialties, remind patients of follow-ups, and serve as a single point of contact. Overall, ensure that patients don’t have to repeat their story at every touchpoint.

7. Incorporate shared decision-making

Shared decision-making (SDM) allows physicians and patients to make health decisions together, considering the best medical evidence and the patient’s values and preferences. This collaborative approach leads to more personalized care and higher patient satisfaction. It also helps patients understand their options, from preventive care to medicine and other treatments.

Surveys show that many patients desire greater involvement in their care decisions. In England’s 2022 GP Patient Survey (with over 700,000 respondents), 44.6% of patients said they wanted more participation in healthcare decisions than they currently have. This was the highest level since this was tracked and was up significantly from prior years.

This research also observed that when patients engage in shared decision-making, outcomes improve. Patients are more likely to adhere to chosen treatment plans, have less regret about their decisions, and report higher satisfaction.

However, there’s a difference in the extent to which patients want to participate in decision-making. Some want to delegate their decisions to the doctor, while others like to evaluate all the options in detail. A population-based study noted that about 20% of people prefer a more clinician-directed approach, but the majority appreciate at least some discussion of options. Personalizing the decision-making approach is key.

Lately, some surveys have started measuring SDM. For example, the CAHPS survey asks if doctors involve patients in decisions as much as they would like.

8. Proactively address health literacy

Health literacy is the ability for patients to obtain, process, and understand basic health information to make appropriate health decisions. Patient care suffers when they can’t comprehend what’s being explained or struggle with medical forms and instructions. Patients with low health literacy are more likely to feel overwhelmed and dissatisfied.

You must put all written and verbal communication in plain language by default. For example, instead of saying, “You have a benign neoplasm,” say, “You have a non-cancerous tumor.” Or you could say, “Limit salt in your food” instead of “Follow a low-sodium diet.” You get the gist.

The written information you give the patient needs to be at a reading level of 6th grade. This helps most adults understand. If possible, include more visual aids, like an infographic showing how to manage chronic conditions.

9. Create a welcoming physical and digital environment

The environment significantly influences how patients feel about their healthcare experience. A welcoming atmosphere is clean, comfortable, easy to navigate, and designed with the patient’s perspective in mind.

Cleanliness is not just about infection control; it affects patient dignity and comfort. Similarly, noise levels matter. Excess noise from alarms, loud staff conversations, and other patients are common complaints and can hinder rest and recovery.

First impressions count. A difficult-to-find clinic with a cluttered, uninviting waiting room and an unfriendly front desk encounter may already put a patient in a negative mindset before any clinical care occurs. On the other hand, a thoughtfully designed environment, both in-person and online, can reduce patient anxiety while building trust and confidence.

You can create a more hospitable environment by:

• Regularly rounding in waiting areas to ask patients if they need anything and offering updates if there’s a delay.
• Avoiding rude signage and using more compassionate language is particularly important in a caregiving facility.
• Providing a seamless digital experience on a mobile app or web browser. This pays off in patient loyalty and positive word-of-mouth reinforcement.

10. Use feedback for continuous improvement

According to an Accenture report, around one in five patients switched healthcare providers in 2023, and 89% of people said they did so because the facility was hard to do business with.

Patient concerns might keep changing, and you, as a facility, need to keep yourself updated with the latest opinions. Healthcare organizations that excel in patient experience treat it as an ongoing quality improvement endeavor. They systematically collect patient feedback and, crucially, act on it. Closing the feedback loop visibly demonstrates to patients that their voices matter and drives continuous service improvements.

You can gather feedback through post-visit or post-call surveys while consistently monitoring patient sentiment and recurring complaints. Some hospitals hold annual patient experience fairs or reward programs to celebrate units that improved scores or solved persistent problems, ensuring a positive patient experience. Sharing improvements with the wider community shows patients that the organization listens and acts on their concerns.

How to Measure Patient Experience

Below are a few metrics healthcare facilities keep track of when observing overall patient experience.

CAHPS and HCAHPS surveys

Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) and Hospital CAHPS (HCAHPS) are the national standards for measuring patient experience in ambulatory and hospital settings.

These patient experience surveys have standardized questions to ensure consistent patient experience data collection across organizations. Qualified vendors administer these surveys via phone or mail. The results are reported publicly, helping healthcare facilities compare their performance against national benchmarks.

Here’s an example of questions asked in an HCAHPS survey:

These surveys aren’t just for measurement; they also show gaps in experience, which, when filled, drive quality, patient safety, and care.

HCAHPS, often called H-caps, was developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in the early 2000s. It was implemented in 2006. The responses are aggregated into 10 publicly reported measures, usually reported as top-box percentages. Benchmarking is robust here.

For example, in a CMS report from mid-2024, the national top-box score was:

• 80% for nurse and doctor communication
• 67% for staff responsiveness
• 70% for “definitely yes” on recommending the hospital

Operational KPIs linked to patient experience

Beyond surveys, there are various operational KPIs that health care professionals keep track of to understand the performance of day-to-day functions.

These KPIs are scattered across different phases of a patient’s journey, for example:

• First call resolution is a measure of the percentage of patient inquiries (calls, messages, etc.) resolved on the first contact without the need for repeat calls or hand-offs. Healthcare call centers solve about 71% of patient issues on the first call, which shows there’s room to improve how quickly and effectively patient questions are answered.
• Average handle time (AHT) is the average duration of a customer service interaction, for example, the time a patient spends on the phone with a scheduling agent or IT help desk, including hold time and wrap-up. AHT reflects efficiency in addressing patient needs. The goal here is to balance speed with excellent care. It’s about 6.6 minutes for a healthcare contact center.
• Wait time is a universal pain point in healthcare. Metrics include time in waiting rooms for clinic visits, ER, etc., time on hold on the phone, and virtual queue time for telehealth visits.
• Follow-up turnaround time is how quickly patients receive results and follow-up instructions from labs or imaging facilities. The shorter the time, the better the patient’s experience.
• Missed appointments and no-show rates are both operational inefficiencies and signals about patient engagement and access. For context, no-show rates in the U.S. vary widely: from as low as 5% in some primary care offices up to 30% or more in certain outpatient specialties.

Ontrak Health uses Nextiva as its cloud-based contact center solution to monitor its operational KPIs.

Qualitative feedback and sentiment data

Qualitative feedback includes survey comments, free-text narratives, social media posts, and call center recordings. Such data captures the why behind the numbers. Many healthcare facilities employ quick feedback requests with post-visit and post-call surveys within 24 hours of a clinic visit.

Some health systems use proprietary post-visit surveys, administered by vendors like Press Ganey, in addition to the standardized CAHPS. Likewise, after a call to a customer service line, an automated interactive voice response (IVR) system can invite the caller to rate the health care experience or answer, “Was your issue resolved? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no,” which is followed by an opportunity to leave a voicemail comment. These on-the-spot surveys offer qualitative snippets that keep fueling the continuous feedback loop.

Healthcare CX tools use AI algorithms to analyze sentiments in these qualitative snippets and determine the overall sentiment. These tools are well-tuned to pick out patient sentiments from call center conversations, reviews, and social mentions.

How to Create a Patient Experience Improvement Plan

Once you know which metrics to track, create a structured plan that turns patient feedback into measurable actions. This way, you can improve the patient experience and achieve better health outcomes.

1. Map the patient journey: Review communication touchpoints, from appointment scheduling and reminders to follow-up calls and test results.
2. Find the main sources of friction: Analyze surveys, complaints, call recordings, wait times, abandonment rates, and patient comments.
3. Set a measurable goal: Choose a specific outcome, such as reducing call abandonment, improving first-call resolution, or shortening follow-up times.
4. Assign responsibility: Give each initiative an owner, deadline, and reporting process.
5. Start with a small pilot: Test the change with one department, location, or patient group before expanding it.
6. Measure and refine: Compare results before and after implementation, adjust the approach, and continue monitoring patient feedback.

AHRQ recommends assessing what drives patient experiences, setting improvement goals, selecting suitable strategies, and starting small when a change requires substantial time or investment. This structured approach also prepares organizations to adapt their patient experience strategy in the future.

How Technology Improves Patient Experience

Communication is a major part of caregiving. It covers how you communicate, its clarity and simplicity, and how well the patient understands and retains that communication.

Unified communications platforms, such as Nextiva, bridge those gaps by providing staff with access to patient context and enabling consistent messaging across all channels. They help your staff be on the same page while dealing with customers, digitally or in person, minimizing miscommunication and patients repeating themselves.

• Omnichannel communication: Patients can connect through phone, text, live chat, email, or video. Staff can view these interactions in one conversation history, reducing unnecessary repetition and transfers.
• EHR integrations: Nextiva integrates with systems such as Epic, ModMed, and eClinicalWorks. Authorized staff can access relevant patient, appointment, prescription, and billing information while managing conversations.
• XBert AI front desk: XBert AI can provide 24/7 support for routine requests, including appointment scheduling, appointment changes, patient verification, prescription refill requests, and billing or insurance questions. More complex or urgent requests can be transferred to staff.
• AI Agent Assist: Nextiva can provide agents with real-time guidance and relevant information during patient conversations, supporting clearer responses and faster resolutions.
• AI-generated summaries: Calls can be transcribed and summarized automatically, giving staff a record of the conversation, action items, and required follow-ups.
• Sentiment analysis: AI can analyze patient conversations for changes in sentiment, giving teams insight into frustration, communication problems, and coaching opportunities.
• Automated follow-up: Healthcare organizations can automate appointment reminders, refill notifications, post-visit messages, and other routine communications.
• Analytics and reporting: Teams can track wait times, call abandonment, first-call resolution, agent performance, and patient sentiment to find gaps in service.
• Security and reliability: Nextiva supports HIPAA-compliant configurations with a signed Business Associate Agreement and provides 99.999% uptime.

Nextiva healthcare solutions deliver these capabilities to reduce administrative work, give staff more context, and make it easier for patients to access support throughout their care journey. AI should support healthcare staff rather than replace human judgment, especially when a request involves urgent, sensitive, or complex medical needs.

See how cloud communications streamline the patient journey from appointment to follow-up.

Frequently Asked Questions About Patient Experience