Nearly half of hospital executives said patient experience is their top priority for the next two years, according to a recent survey. However, scores have steadily declined since 2019.

In 2020, 14% of executives said patient experience was their top strategic initiative. In 2025, that rose to 49%. However, patients’ “likelihood to recommend” scores have declined 2.2 points since 2019 — the only setting to see a decline. The corresponding scores have improved 2.8 points for medical practices, 1.7 points for ASCs and 0.5 points for emergency departments.

Becker’s asked nine leaders what levers hospitals can pull this year to have the greatest impact on patient experience. A single theme emerged: clear communication with patients.

Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Jen Bayersdorfer. Chief Quality Officer at Providence St. Joseph Health (Renton, Wash.): The single greatest lever hospitals can pull is making coordination of care reliable and visible at the bedside. When patients clearly understand who is caring for them, what the plan is, what happens next and how transitions will occur, experience improves across multiple domains simultaneously, including nurse communication, discharge information, care transitions and overall rating. Standardizing practices such as bedside shift report, interdisciplinary rounding, purposeful hourly rounding and proactive discharge planning creates consistency in the patient journey rather than isolated service behaviors. This is all possible with a renewed focus on team-based, human-centered care.

Theresa Brennan, MD. Chief Medical Officer at University of Iowa Health Care (Iowa City): It is important to clarify the connection between patient experience, staff engagement and quality outcomes. This shifts the conversation toward measurable results rather than perception alone. We know that higher staff engagement and a strong culture of safe, high-quality care are directly associated with better patient satisfaction.

An exceptional patient experience happens when everyone involved in a patient’s care consistently communicates clearly and leads with empathy. Given the complexity of care, many people interact with patients during their encounters. Getting everyone on the healthcare team aligned with the patient’s needs and these expectations of every patient, every time, can be a challenge. There is increasing recognition of the impact patient experience has on overall quality outcomes, making it a priority for improvement efforts. Across the country, organizations are implementing operational changes such as structured bedside handoffs and nurse leader rounding to strengthen communication and enhance the patient experience.

Chris Cable, MD. Clinical Lead for Risant Health (District of Columbia): Across the healthcare industry, patients encounter significant variability in emergency department boarding times based on when they seek care — what day of the week or what week of the year they happen to need our help. This cannot be the case if we want our patients to have the best experience and outcomes in our hospitals.

Risant Health is focused on eliminating inconsistency in ED boarding and is already making progress with our Care Without Delay system. By adjusting how we do things behind the scenes, like staffing plans and rounding routines, we can make a big impact on how patients move into, through and out of our emergency departments. Not only is this a major driver of patient experience, we also know from evidence that quality outcomes are higher when patients spend less time waiting in the ED and more time in the hospital, where a full array of services are available. Since implementing Care Without Delay at Geisinger Community Medical Center a year ago, ED boarding hours have decreased by 55%, or more than 5,600 hours per month compared with the baseline.

Flavia Diaz-Hays, MSN, APRN. Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety at El Paso (Texas) Children’s Hospital: The biggest lever that hospitals can pull this year to improve patient experience is doubling down on the reliability and consistency of communication throughout the patient’s journey. In our opinion, patient experience boils down to how informed, respected and emotionally connected patients and families feel during their care journey. Of course clinical outcomes matter, but often patients and families determine if they received high-quality care by if the staff listened to them, explained things in a way that they could understand, and worked together like a team. If hospitals hardwire the discipline of standardized interdisciplinary bedside rounding, leader visibility and service recovery done in real time, we can create much more reliable and consistent experiences for our patients and families. When we focus less on “Is Sally a good communicator?” and more on “Did we communicate with Sally at the expected times throughout her stay?” we will see patient trust and experience increase.

There are a few things that have changed that allow us to leverage improvement in patient experience: 1) We, as executives and board members, understand that patient experience is not a variable to safety and quality — it is safety and quality. 2) We have real-time data available to us now to identify gaps in experience and intervene before they become system problems. 3) We are investing more than ever in our workforce to understand that employee engagement directly correlates to patient experience. 4) We are embracing high reliability principles, leadership rounding and accountability structures that force us to focus on the patient experience as part of our daily operations.

Alexander Greengold. Senior Vice President and Chief Consumer Experience Officer at Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston): When hospitals make the patient experience predictable, transparent and human, trust follows. At Memorial Hermann, we see the strongest impact from “ease of visit” behaviors like clear arrival guidance, proactive communication and consistent follow-through. By combining AI, real-time operational data and a deep understanding of the patient journey, we’re shifting from reacting to problems after they occur to predicting and preventing them.

Historically, the patient experience was treated as a survey score rather than an operational system. Feedback arrived weeks or months after the encounter — far too late to drive meaningful change — while accountability was fragmented, with no clear owner of the end-to-end journey. Experience improvement is more achievable now because data and technology have finally converged at the point of care. Hospitals can combine operational, digital and experience signals — not just lagging surveys — to predict dissatisfaction and intervene in real time, during the stay, rather than after the fact. At the same time, digital tools such as mobile check-in, real-time messaging, smart rooms and integrated rounding dashboards are embedded directly into care workflows, allowing teams to remove friction. At Memorial Hermann, this has enabled a shift from reactive service recovery to predictive, system-level experience design — allowing us to focus on the moments that matter most and scaling what works across our care delivery sites.

Lorie Rhine, MSN, RN. Chief Nursing Executive at UNC Health (Chapel Hill, N.C.): The most powerful lever is integrating patient experience with safety and quality, treating them as inseparable outcomes of reliable care. At UNC Health, our goal is to establish 100% trust with our patients, just as we strive for zero harm. When patients consistently feel safe, heard and cared for, their experience improves naturally.

At UNC Health, progress has accelerated through our proprietary care delivery model, Carolina Care, and the implementation of a standardized Nursing Bundle focused on safety and reliability. This bundle includes consistent interval nursing rounds, patient-engaged bedside report, and nurse and hospital leader rounding. Through these practices, nurses and leaders intentionally convey a clear message of safety and presence to patients. We support this work with standardized tools, leader education and clear accountability processes to ensure high fidelity across the system. Importantly, we measure not only process adherence through observation and validation, but also patient perception. We assess whether patients experience these safety-focused practices through nursing bundle questions on the HCAHPS survey and have recently added a systemwide patient-reported safety question to better understand whether patients feel safe while in our care.

Kristie Rozands, BSN, RN. Senior Director of Operations at Manning Family Children’s (New Orleans): The biggest lever for patient experience is communication with patients and families. Hospitals must ensure that families understand how to navigate the hospital environment, including outpatient services, inpatient care, diagnostic testing, discharge planning and billing processes. Clear, proactive communication reduces anxiety, builds trust and improves overall satisfaction. When families feel informed and supported, their experience improves — even during complex or stressful situations.

Historically, patient experience improvement has relied heavily on survey feedback. Many families are overwhelmed after hospitalization and may choose not to complete surveys, resulting in low response rates. This limits actionable data and often delays identification of communication gaps. Hospitals now have better tools, data visibility and structured processes to proactively engage families rather than relying solely on post-discharge surveys. By standardizing communication expectations and reinforcing accountability across teams, meaningful improvement is more attainable than ever.

Maureen Sullivan, BSN, RN. Vice President of Patient Experience and Service Excellence at MetroHealth (Cleveland): We lost some ground in consistently demonstrating our best practices [for patient experience] during the pandemic, and it takes time, focus and sustained effort to rebuild them. At MetroHealth, we’ve seen patients respond positively to our human‑centered training, particularly the emphasis on empathy. For example, historically the emergency department has been one of the most challenging care settings to consistently exceed patient expectations, and we’ve seen a steady improvement that has been sustained for the past year. What has made the greatest impact, however, is the commitment of clinical leadership to fostering a culture of excellence and accountability. This focus supports not only exceptional care for patients but also a positive, engaging and supportive environment for the staff who deliver that care.

Barbara Vazquez, DNP, RN. Chief Nursing Officer for Christus Children’s Hospital (San Antonio): The biggest opportunity we have right now is to give our caregivers more time to be fully present with patients and families. Competing demands such as documentation, technology, operational pressures often pull caregivers away from the bedside. Even the most dedicated team can struggle to deliver the kind of calm, consistent communication families deserve when the system makes it hard to do so. When nurses and care teams can slow down enough to listen, explain, and connect, everything about the experience improves. It’s not a new idea, but it’s the one that consistently makes the most meaningful difference.

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