Why more hospital leaders are focusing on the patient experience

More hospital and health system executives say that they view improving the patient experience as their top priority.

About half (49%) of hospital leaders say they consider the patient experience their system’s top strategic priority for 2025-2027, according to a report released by Sage Growth Partners this week. Sage Growth Partners surveyed 101 healthcare executives for the report.

The survey indicates a significant increase in the number of hospital leaders naming patient experience as their top priority, up from 36% in 2023 and 25% in 2022.

Dan D'Orazio, CEO of Sage Growth Partners, notes that in the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals were focused on dealing with the crisis at hand. As the pandemic subsided, hospital leaders were focused on patient safety.

Now, hospital leaders see that they need to focus on improving the patient experience and making it easier for patients to access the health system, he tells Chief Healthcare Executive®.

“I've always had the strong supposition that health care is consumer-ish at best, and I equate patient experience and consumer experience and satisfaction,” D’Orazio says.

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Focus on access

Hospital and health system executives are focusing heavily on “access, access, access,” D’Orazio says.

Hospitals are especially interested in making their services more appealing to patients with commercial insurance, he says.

D’Orazio says health system leaders are consistently saying, “We need the best payer mix we can get.”

“I think that they're very careful and thoughtful about their payer mix, their case,mix index,” he says. “And in order to get the better kinds of demand you better be more and more equipped to have a better patient experience.”

Hospitals have made significant strides in improving patient safety metrics since the pandemic, with studies showing that health systems are seeing fewer hospital-acquired infections. The Leapfrog Group found steady improvement in a number of measures in its Spring 2025 Hospital Safety Grades.

But that report also showed patient experience metrics have lagged behind. Katie Stewart, The Leapfrog Group’s director of health care ratings, told Chief Healthcare Executive® in the spring that hospitals still have room for improvement in that area.

“We are seeing improvements in patient experience, but we're not back at those pre-pandemic levels,” Stewart said.

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Investing in virtual care

Most of the healthcare leaders surveyed said they are looking at digital options to make it easier for patients to get care.

Nearly three-quarters of hospital executives (72%) said it’s critical to integrate virtual care services into their care model, and 81% say they think AI will have a significant impact in expanding home care and remote patient monitoring programs.

A strong majority (60%) say digital tools can have an impact on attracting and retaining patients. More than three-quarters say digital tools can improve clinical efficiencies and administrative efficiencies.

More than half of those surveyed say they are offering virtual primary care (59%) and remote patient monitoring services, while half (50%) are offering telestroke programs.

Hospitals are seeing a growing demand for services with an aging population, even as they have consistently struggled with staffing shortages in recent years. So they are looking at ways to provide services.

“We're coming into a period of time where the physician population is shrinking, and the number of people who are sick and chronic is growing, just the sheer numbers of it,” D’Orazio says. “And I think these hospitals are waking up, going, ‘Well, we need a different set of tools.’”

Questions of ROI

At the same time, hospital leaders say that despite strong enthusiasm for telehealth, they aren’t seeing their investments yielding significant returns, at least not yet.

Less than 30% of those surveyed said they are earning significant returns on investments from most of their virtual care offerings. Most say they are breaking even or at least seeing some return on their investments, but they acknowledge that bigger returns may take time.

One promising area could be virtual triage in emergency departments. Only 10% of respondents say they have implemented virtual triage, but of those who have, most (78%) said they are seeing some return or a significant return.

But with an aging patient population and ongoing shortages of doctors and nurses, health system executives say they see a need to invest in more telehealth and digital health options to meet patient needs now and in the future.

“At some point there's no choice,” D’Orazio says.

Healthcare leaders also indicated that they are willing to switch technology vendors if they aren’t seeing anticipated returns. D’Orazio says hospital leaders may be less patient than they have been when it comes to adopting new offerings from vendors.

“I think that pressure is more real than ever because of many of the failed promises of technology and healthcare,” he says.

“I do think that the buyers are tired of waiting, and therefore they're putting more pressure on sooner,” he says of demands on ROI. “The problem is, when we talk about health information technology, technology is often the least difficult part of this process.”

Hospital leaders are showing more enthusiasm for ambient documentation tools, which use AI-powered technology to record and summarize physicians’ conversations with patients. Doctors can spend less time typing notes on a computer, and they’re able to look at patients face-to-face, D’Orazio notes.

That’s an area where technology can offer a better experience for patients and clinicians.

“It's the first time people are feeling like technology worked for a doctor,” D’Orazio says. “We've literally had people tell us on the phone, ‘I can face my patient, I can look at my patient.’”