Healthier Financials from the Patient Experience

Performance on patient experience scores can impact the cash flow and operating profit margins of hospitals, which may mean organizations have to align quality metrics and leadership to influence patients’ perceptions of their care.

This abstract aims to answer two questions:

• What is the relationship between patient experience and financial performance? And;
• What role does the hospital’s type play in moderating that relationship?

Recent research across 100 US hospitals found that the patient experience in those hospitals did have an impact on financial performance, specifically finding it had positive relationships with cash flow margins and operating profit margins across for-profit, non-profit and governmental hospitals.

Those different types of hospitals did have a moderating effect on the experience-financials relationship, with governmental hospitals having the greatest moderating effect.

Government hospital facilities may “sacrifice operating revenues,” as in treating fewer patients, or incur additional costs “in order to continue improving patient experience after achieving a certain level.”

This is an area where smaller hospitals may outperform their larger counterparts, as facilities with more than 50 beds and 100 employees were consistently scored worse on patient experience.

The research highlighted that for smaller hospitals, it’s easier to make changes, also, rural hospitals are more familiar with what their patients need as they are closer to the communities they serve.

The study should have implications across healthcare organizations. For hospital and health system boards, it is recommended to establish a “standing patient experience oversight committee” within existing governing boards, train those boards on quality metrics related to patient experience and include those metrics in the key performance indicators for hospital executives.

For hospital leaders, the research also recommended developing a Chief Experience Officer (or CXO). That role has become increasingly common in healthcare C-suites, with a 2017 survey of 1,000 hospitals by the Beryl Institute finding 63 percent of facilities already having such an executive in place.

Emphasis on those efforts can’t stop at the C-suite and board level, and should include steps for employee engagement, like maintaining appropriate nursing staff levels and implementing daily nurse leader rounds to observe patient interactions.