Patient Experience, Defined
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
Or, at least an attempt to establish a universal framework
Paul Schrimpf, Christine Arbesman
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Everyone talks about patient experience, yet no two people define it the same way. For some, it means satisfaction scores. For others, hospitality or bedside manner. Still others equate it with clinical quality, outcomes, or safety. Without a shared definition, patient experience becomes difficult to manage, measure, or improve consistently.
As one recent analysis of healthcare leadership interviews concludes, patient experience now stands as a vital financial and strategic imperative, far beyond simple satisfaction scores. The framework below is not definitive. It is an attempt to bring structure and clarity so clinical, operational, and administrative leaders can align around shared language and tradeoffs.
Research across dozens of studies shows that better patient experience is consistently associated with better clinical effectiveness and patient safety, including lower mortality, stronger adherence to treatment, and more appropriate use of services. A durable definition must therefore resonate with clinicians, operators, and executives alike.
Patient experience can be understood as the sum of two forces working together: clinical performance and hospitality.
It is not created by choosing between them, but by aligning them. Strong outcomes delivered through a confusing or stressful journey erode trust. Polished hospitality without reliable outcomes feels hollow. When the two work together, care both works and feels right.
Level 1: Patient Experience Defined
At its core, patient experience reflects how effectively a health system improves a patient’s health and how that patient experiences the journey of care while it happens. It includes outcomes, safety, recovery, and quality of life. It also includes trust, confidence, clarity, and emotional reassurance. It shapes whether patients feel anxious or supported, overwhelmed or guided, reduced to a diagnosis or treated as a person. “Medical care can only be great if the patient thinks it is,” says A. Lorris Betz, MD, PhD, former Senior Vice President for Health Sciences at the University of Utah Health.
Increasingly, patient experience also shapes financial performance. Value-based purchasing, public reporting, penalties, and reputation now link experience measures directly to reimbursement and utilization. To make this definition practical, it helps to break patient experience into its foundational pillars.
Level 2: Foundational Pillars of Patient Experience
2a. Clinical Performance
Clinical performance answers the most fundamental question: did the care work?
It includes outcomes, recovery trajectories, complication rates, readmissions, and improvements in quality of life. It depends on patient safety, evidence-based practice, medication accuracy, and coordination across teams. It reflects how systems perform under real-world conditions, not just ideal ones. Studies consistently find that better reported patient experience is associated with stronger clinical outcomes, fewer safety events, and shorter lengths of stay. Clinical performance forms the foundation on which trust is built.
This pillar is tightly linked to reimbursement and penalties. In the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program, billions of dollars in Medicare payments are placed at risk each year based on quality and experience scores. Readmission penalties and public rankings further reinforce the need for consistent execution. Clinical performance is therefore protocol-driven, data-intensive, and highly regulated. Much of this work is invisible to patients unless something fails, yet its impact is profound.
2b. Hospitality and Satisfaction
Hospitality answers a different but equally important question: did the care feel human?
This pillar shapes comfort, clarity, and emotional safety. It includes communication, empathy, responsiveness, environment, and respect. It determines whether care feels organized or chaotic, supportive or isolating. Hospitality reduces anxiety by making care easier to navigate and less intimidating. Even when clinical care is strong, failures in hospitality can leave patients feeling confused or dismissed.
Perception matters. Research shows that patients who report stronger inpatient and discharge experiences often have lower 30-day readmission rates, underscoring how felt experience and outcomes are intertwined. Press Ganey’s findings similarly show that perceived safety and trust strongly influence likelihood to recommend and loyalty. “The patient is the most important member of the care team,” says Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Unlike clinical performance, hospitality is experienced moment by moment. It depends heavily on behaviors, consistency, and culture, and is often delivered by non-clinical teams whose impact is no less significant. Pillars define what matters. Programs determine whether it actually happens.
Level 3: Programs as the Operating Layer
Clinical performance and hospitality do not improve by intention alone. Health systems rely on programs to translate priorities into repeatable execution. Programs are defined initiatives with clear goals, leadership, trained teams, and enabling technology designed to improve outcomes and experience at scale.
A program may be clinical, such as a stroke rehabilitation initiative focused on accelerating recovery and reducing readmissions through coordinated therapy and standardized protocols. It may be operational, such as a food service program that supports nutrition and comfort. It may be administrative, such as a billing program that reduces confusion and anxiety during financial interactions.
Programs can be internal, external, or a blend of both. Internal examples include emergency department throughput initiatives or care coordination models. External programs may involve contracted physician groups or service providers that directly influence outcomes and experience.
What matters is not ownership, but integration. The patient experience is shaped not only by a vendor’s capability, but by how well the health system governs, aligns, and embeds that program into its operating model. Well run programs reduce variability, create consistency across sites and shifts, and enable learning at scale. Poorly governed programs introduce fragmentation and undermine both outcomes and experience. Programs only work if their elements are economically sustainable.
Level 4: Program Elements and Economic Reality
Programs succeed or fail based on their elements, and every element must earn its place. At a fundamental level, elements improve either clinical outcomes, the hospitality experience, or both. These categories behave differently economically.
Clinical elements are often tied to reimbursable events or penalty avoidance. Improvements in recovery, complication reduction, length of stay, or readmission prevention connect directly to revenue protection, revenue generation, or cost control. Value-based reimbursement models reinforce these investments with measurable financial return.
Hospitality elements operate differently. Investments in comfort, empathy, navigation, and communication rarely generate direct reimbursement. They appear first as cost. Yet they influence trust, adherence, repeat utilization, and recommendation behavior. Their economic return is indirect and realized over time.
This distinction creates discipline in design. Strong patient experience requires the right mix of clinical and hospitality investments. Clinical elements help sustain the system financially. Hospitality investments must be targeted to moments of vulnerability, confusion, or stress where they meaningfully influence perception and behavior.
The goal is not to maximize hospitality or minimize it. It is to integrate it intelligently with clinical performance so patient experience is both human and financially durable.
Bringing It All Together
This framework is not a final definition of patient experience. It is a structure for thinking about it more clearly. By grounding the conversation in clinical performance, hospitality, programs, and program elements, leaders gain a shared language. Tradeoffs become explicit. Responsibilities become clearer. Investments become more deliberate.
Used this way, patient experience is no longer a soft concept or a narrow satisfaction metric. It becomes an operating discipline, one that connects outcomes, trust, economics, and execution. When clinical performance and hospitality are aligned, supported by well designed programs and economically sound elements, patient experience becomes something that can be built intentionally rather than debated abstractly.
Acknowledgements & Citations
This report draws insights and direct quotes from:
Anhang Price R, et al. A systematic review of evidence … between patient experience and clinical safety and effectiveness. BMJ Open, 2014.
Gleeson H, et al. Associations between patient experiences and clinical outcomes in hospitals: a systematic review. BMJ Open, 2019.
Gleeson H, et al. Patient experiences: a systematic review of quality improvement interventions. BMJ Open, 2016.
Shields Health Solutions. Patient Experience and Patient Outcomes: A Comprehensive Guide. 2025.
Ensemble Health Partners. Understanding the Financial Impact of Patient Satisfaction Scores. 2025.
Relias. What Is Patient Satisfaction and What Is Its Financial Impact? 2023.
Press Ganey. Patient Experience 2025: New Trends and Behaviors. 2025.
Integrated Loyalty Systems. The ROI of Patient Experience. White paper.
SCP Health. The Lifetime Value of Patient Loyalty. 2025.
University of Utah Health. The Five Elements of Patient Experience. 2025.
CareCloud. 10 Patient Experience Quotes for Inspiration. 2025.
Healthcare Leadership Insights for Transforming Patient and Family Experience. Peer-reviewed article indexed in PubMed Central, 2025.