Section 2: Why Improve Patient Experience?

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• At both the practice and individual provider levels, patient experience positively correlates to processes of care for both prevention and disease management.1 For example, diabetic patients demonstrate greater self-management skills and quality of life when they report positive interactions with their providers.2 Patients' experiences with care, particularly communication with providers, correlate with adherence to medical advice and treatment plans.3-6 This is especially true among patients with chronic conditions, where a strong commitment from patients to work with their providers is essential for achieving positive results.7 Patients with better care experiences often have better health outcomes.8,9 For example, studies of patients hospitalized for heart attack showed that patients with more positive reports about their experiences with care had better health outcomes a year after discharge.10,11

• Good patient experience is associated with lower medical malpractice risk.12,13 A 2009 study found that for each drop in patient-reported scores along a five-step scale of "very good" to "very poor," the likelihood of a provider being named in a malpractice suit increased by 21.7 percent.14 Efforts to improve patient experience also result in greater employee satisfaction, reducing turnover. Improving the experience of patients and families requires improving work processes and systems that enable clinicians and staff to provide more effective care. A focused endeavor to improve patient experience at one hospital resulted in a 4.7 percent reduction in employee turnover.15 Patients keep or change providers based upon experience. Relationship quality is a major predictor of patient loyalty; one study found patients reporting the poorest-quality relationships with their physicians were three times more likely to voluntarily leave the physician's practice than patients with the highest-quality relationships.16