Elevating the patient experience in healthcare

Healthcare is undergoing a transformation, driven by rising patient expectations and rapidly advancing technology. Today, patients expect seamless, personalized, and high-quality care experiences, and healthcare organizations are challenged to meet these expectations while improving clinical outcomes and efficiency. But delivering a truly exceptional patient experience isn’t just a matter of convenience—it directly impacts health outcomes, loyalty, and operational success.

Let’s explore how patient-centric approaches, data insights, and strategic design can enhance patient experiences at every stage of care.

What is patient experience in healthcare?

Patient experience encompasses every interaction a patient has with a healthcare system — from making appointments to receiving care and communicating with providers. 

Historically, patients had only a few touchpoints with their providers. They would see their care team in-person during health appointments, interface with support and appointment scheduling staff, or call to get in touch with a clinician to answer their questions.

Over the past decade, however, this relatively limited list of potential healthcare touchpoints has expanded rapidly to include new digital tools and greater communication flexibility than ever before. 

While these advancements carry significant promise to elevate engagement strategies and maximize care team bandwidth, they also create new opportunities to make or break patient perception of your organization, your culture, and even your competence as a provider.

Each interaction — whether online, on the phone, or in person — is only one small part of the overall patient experience. In practice, patient experiences are more commonly judged holistically by the relative ease with which patients can move between these interactions as they progress along their unique health journey.

Unlike patient satisfaction, which measures how content a patient feels, patient experience is about the quality of care at each stage. According to a survey by The Beryl Institute, 71% of patients believe healthcare systems should prioritize their experiences, viewing it as central to quality care.

Why is patient experience important in healthcare?

For years, patient perceptions of care quality were undervalued in healthcare administration. Clinics and hospitals primarily engaged patients based on the needs of clinicians, workflows, and revenue streams. This focus stemmed not from a lack of concern for patients but from treatment reimbursement models that prioritized the volume of procedures (fee-for-service) over health outcomes.

The passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 brought significant changes, introducing a value-based care model that rewarded providers for delivering quality care—defined as improved patient outcomes, better population health, lower costs, and increased provider satisfaction. The latter has become crucial in payer reimbursement, as healthcare organizations now use metrics like the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) survey to guide patient-centered care.

Patient expectations are evolving as well. With 88% of patients researching reviews online, the era of high-deductible health plans means they have more financial stakes than ever. This consumerization of healthcare has led patients to strategically choose clinicians and providers, raising their expectations.

Add to the mix a plethora of powerful, frictionless customer experiences surrounding patients at every turn in their day-to-day lives, and it is no surprise that patient expectations are rising. Compared to their last best experience in retail or with a direct-to-consumer brand, patients are demanding more from their providers.

For healthcare organizations, the potential cost of a poor experience can have a disastrous effect on already razor-thin provider margins. A U.S. Healthcare Consumer Experience study found that 41% o=of young healthcare consumers would stop visiting their provider after a negative digital experience, with 20% having already switched for this reason. With new entrants like startups and retail-based clinics, providers cannot afford to lag.

Moreover, a positive patient experience is linked to better health outcomes, lower hospital readmissions, and higher satisfaction. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), providers focused on patient experience see 17% fewer post-surgery complications and decreased readmissions. An Accenture study revealed that nearly 80% of patients would switch providers due to poor experiences, highlighting the critical impact on patient retention.

Key components of a great patient experience in healthcare

Since COVID-19 disrupted many established patterns of care, most healthcare organizations can say they now check at least some of the digital boxes in a patient’s provider expectations checklist. 

But these piecemeal executions of next-gen patient experience can’t live in a silo. They require seamless, strategic connectivity to every aspect of your healthcare operation — informed by data-driven insights — to drive truly transformational patient experiences that take your organization from ad-hoc patient experience strategies to embedded competitive advantages.

To move from left to right on this chart toward embedded status, here’s where organizations should focus their efforts:

• Ease of access and navigation: From scheduling appointments to accessing records, every patient touchpoint should be seamless. Complex processes or long wait times can drive patients away, so simplifying these steps is crucial. Consider implementing digital appointment scheduling, easy-access portals, and clear communication channels to establish an easily accessible digital front door that reduces friction.
   
• Personalization of care:  Patients want to feel like individuals, not numbers. Personalization in healthcare means delivering relevant, timely information and treatment plans tailored to each patient’s needs. This could include personalized communication, custom follow-up care instructions, and treatment reminders — all of which enhance the patient’s experience and adherence to care.
   
• Transparency and trust: Transparency is fundamental to a trusting patient-provider relationship. When patients have access to their medical information and a clear understanding of their treatment plans, they’re more engaged and empowered in their healthcare journeys. Ensure clear communication on everything from costs to procedures, and keep patients informed at each step.
   
• Empathy and support throughout the journey: The healthcare experience doesn’t start and end with a doctor’s visit; it spans the entire patient journey. By providing empathetic and consistent support before, during, and after a visit, healthcare providers can address patient concerns, provide reassurance, and reduce stress, leading to a more positive experience overall.

How to measure and improve the patient experience

Understanding and optimizing patient experience requires more than anecdotal feedback; it requires data-driven insights. Here are some ways to turn data into action:

Two examples of leading patient experiences

Wondering what it looks like when an organization finally achieves a truly embedded patient experience strategy? While the results will vary based on the unique value propositions each organization seeks to provide, many of the best examples start by seeking solutions to key patient pain points and linking them to critical business initiatives. 

Let’s look at two examples of organizations that got it right:

Mary Washington Healthcare: Digital patient experiences driven by data

Mary Washington Healthcare is a large not-for-profit healthcare system with multiple hospitals and more than 50 healthcare facilities and wellness services. To deliver next-gen patient engagement, Mary Washington knew they needed to move away from analog approaches like TV and print and instead capitalize on the power of personalized digital experiences. They also knew they weren’t fully leveraging the wealth of data resources they had at their disposal to target patients with high-risk and chronic conditions and make decisions about the appropriate engagement strategies for each patient.

By partnering with TTEC Digital to help design and orchestrate a modern digital strategy, Mary Washington can unify and enrich disparate data from Epic and other data sources that will allow them to better engage selected patients with solutions that fit their patients’ digital expectations.

DispatchHealth: Reducing visit friction with accessible care

DispatchHealth’s big idea for patient care was simple: not every healthcare condition should require scheduling an in-person appointment or a frantic rush to the emergency room. Particularly, they saw a gap in care for patients with conditions who may face major challenges or additional health risks when trying to come in for an appointment at a clinic or hospital. These in-person visits also incurred higher costs—often beyond what was medically necessary to treat many routine ailments and illnesses. To help remove this major friction point, DispatchHealth wanted to design a way to make healthcare more mobile.

TTEC Digital helped DispatchHealth set up a hospital-at-home program where care is delivered in a patient’s home. Now, patients easily request care via a simple mobile or online request portal. On the back end, patient care teams assess each patient’s situation, and a real-time communication platform helps dispatch a qualified care team to treat each medical condition at home. As a result, this new care delivery model allows DispatchHealth to save an average of $6,200 per patient in unnecessary hospital and clinic costs while creating valuable peace of mind for overburdened patient populations.

Designing a seamless patient journey with TTEC Digital

Patients today have more choices than ever, and they won’t hesitate to switch providers if their needs aren’t met. 

At TTEC Digital, we help healthcare organizations craft patient-centered experiences through data insights, seamless digital solutions, and strategic design. By focusing on each stage of the patient journey, we ensure that every interaction adds value and builds trust.

With expertise in journey mapping, technology integration, and patient feedback analysis, TTEC Digital empowers healthcare providers to optimize each step in the patient journey — from the initial online inquiry to post-care follow-up. Our solutions don’t just meet expectations; they exceed them by transforming healthcare into a truly patient-centric experience.