The value of connecting with the patient

Why is connecting with the patient important?

In past decades, the healthcare industry has focused on high quality care, safe outcomes, and volume of patients seen.  However, there has been a shift in that focus since 2012, with the addition of the experience of patients into this equation.  Connecting with patients has been identified as one of the key ways to improve patient adherence to care plans and improve clinical outcomes, while also impacting loyalty and trust to the brand in an environment that is becoming increasingly competitive.  A consumer’s consistent experience with an organization is how loyalty is solidified, and leads to a willingness to recommend an organization to family members and friends.  To get to this consistent experience, organizations must proactively implement strategies that will develop wanted behaviors.

Overview of CMS, HCAHPS & VBP

Before diving into the specifics of how to connect with patients, let’s first talk about the history of patient experience, how it works, and its importance. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is a United States federal subagency of the Department of Health and Human Services.  CMS provides health coverage through various programs and is also the creator of and governing body over specific healthcare industry metrics. Two of the more familiar metrics are the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers & Systems (HCAHPS) and value based purchasing (VBP)².

HCAHPS “is a [nationally standardized] survey instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients' perceptions of their hospital experience”¹ that was included in VBP as of 2012.  Before the HCAHPS survey was established, there was no national standard for how to collect patient experience information and how to publicly report on it.  Consequently, there was no way for healthcare organizations to benchmark their performance with other organizations to identify strengths and opportunities within their patients’ experiences.  The regulated HCAHPS survey consists of (as of 2025) 25 consistency focused questions pertaining to critical aspects of patients' hospital experiences and 7 demographic questions.   It is important to note that due to standardization of the HCAHPS survey, organizations are not able to change questions or answer scale verbiage or remove questions, and are limited in the amount of questions they can add to the survey as custom questions.

VBP is a CMS program in which high quality performance on certain identified metrics  allows for incentives in the inpatient hospital setting.  The program is focused on how Medicare beneficiaries are treated during a hospital stay based on various factors such as: patient experience, safety, and quality of care.³  CMS withholds 2% of Medicare payments to every hospital each year, and awards it back to hospitals based on their performance, with the goal being quality of care, not quantity of care provided.³

CMS, HCAHPS and VBP are important to understand as they provide context to why patient experience is regulated within the United States healthcare system and why it is a priority for organizations year after year.  Taking it one step further, organizations are looking to grow their patient populations, expand services provided, and become the premier organization for healthcare within their communities.  One way to achieve these goals is to ensure patients and community members have exceptional experiences at their facilities.  But it is not as simple as providing excellent high-quality care.  Consumers in today’s world are looking for ease of access to services, transparency of cost of services, and last, but most importantly, how they are treated while receiving these services.

Defining patient experience

The patient experience movement has widened its focus from primarily the experience of the patient, to include all of the people that care for the patient in their lifetime.  This could include the patient’s family, healthcare providers, friends, etc.  The Beryl Institute defines Patient Experience as “the sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care. We believe human experience is grounded in the experiences of patients & families, members of the healthcare workforce and the communities they serve.”⁴  The human experience is grounded in personal connections, which are built on the foundations of trust and respect. Due to healthcare becoming more competitive, patients have more choices and can get their health care needs met in a way that fits their personal preferences. This has highlighted the importance of listening more intently to the patient voice to better meet those preferences and build trust in a healthcare brand.

Specific topics of interest

Areas explored in this research paper are focused on how to foster connections with patients to create the desired experiences and behaviors that make patients loyal to an organization. While this focus on loyalty leads to exceptional experiences, it also leads to improvement of high quality, safe patient care and positively impacts organizational business outcomes.

Insights derived from this research paper will deep dive into the meaning and relevance of the 3 identified areas of empathy, human-centered care and communication to improve patient experience.  These insights will also outline evidence-based best practices to implement within your healthcare organization to improve experiences and maintain loyalty from your patients and community. Beyond best practices, and the traditional post-care survey, we will discuss the importance of  leveraging Qualtrics tools to better understand the messages and experiences patients are sharing, how to bring to life their stories, and how to act proactively in the ever evolving healthcare space.

Three key areas that foster connection with patients

How empathy impacts patient experience

Bréne Brown - a researcher and storyteller who's spent two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy - describes empathy as feeling with people. Empathy is what drives human connection. More specifically, empathy in healthcare is the ability of the caregiver, physicians, nurses and advanced practice professionals to listen, understand and effectively respond to the feelings, experiences and needs of their patients. Empathy means recognizing the emotional state of the patient, understanding their perspective without judgment, and responding in a manner that demonstrates compassion and genuine human concern for their wellbeing.¹⁵

Empathy can also have positive effects on clinical care, such as encouraging open dialogue with patients, building trust between practitioner and patient and ultimately leading to a patient feeling as though their concerns are valid and understood. When patients feel cared for, they ultimately feel encouraged to be engaged in their own care at a higher level. This engagement in their personal care can improve adherence to care plans and ultimately help them have a more positive view of their overall healthcare experience.  Physicians who are more skilled at demonstrating empathy have seen higher outcomes in terms of pain intensity, functional disability, and overall health-related quality of life. ⁶

Best practices for empathy

There are many evidence-based best practices for empathy that can be implemented to improve the patient’s experience. These practices are intended to make the patient feel comfortable, take into account their feelings and concerns, and demonstrate an understanding of the patient’s preferences. Often these practices can help put a patient at ease, and establishes a human connection that is beneficial for all involved.

• Utilize the patient’s preferred name  - It is considered acceptable behavior to ask a patient how they wish to be identified, taking into account this preference can help establish a personal connection and reduce any confusion or unintended offense to a patient
• Focusing on the entire patient as a person, not just the clinical diagnosis - It can be easy to forget that the patient you are treating is more than their diagnosis. It’s important to understand that a patient may have concerns beyond their healthcare needs (such as financial or family care concerns) and addressing or understanding these concerns can provide context for a patient’s behavior or ability to focus on the conversation.
• Commit to Sit - Sitting when visiting a patient indicates that the healthcare professional is fully focused on the patient and their concerns. Studies have shown that when sitting with a patient they feel the interaction lasts longer than when standing, and can help demonstrate a personal connection.
• Perspective taking (as listed above) - putting yourself in the shoes of the patient, understanding where they are coming from, and considering fully their concerns and feelings.

How Qualtrics can help

In thinking through how to choose which best practice would impact your patient’s experiences the best, you must first analyze and understand the feedback your patients are providing.  Qualtrics’s Site of Care Surveys specifically focus on the quality of the interaction between caregivers and patients, and can provide valuable insights into what is most important to patients during their healthcare visit.  A few Qualtrics solutions that can be utilized to analyze these insights include Text iQ and/or Discover, along with other qualitative analytical widgets via dashboards, such as Word Clouds, Text iQ Bubble Widgets and Tables, as well as verbatim comments.

• Text IQ - assign topics to feedback you’ve received, perform sentiment analysis, report out on your results with dynamic widgets, and more!
• Text IQ in CX Dashboards - uncover different visuals and analytical capabilities available to you in your dashboards through the platform
• Discover - analyze your customer feedback taking place in conversations across different channels using topic models and machine learning algorithms to uncover improvement insights

How human-centered care impacts patient experience

As defined by the PX Academy, “Human-centered care encompasses the full spectrum of an individual’s life journey. It emphasizes empathy, understanding, and the social, environmental, and cultural factors that impact a person’s overall well-being”⁷.  It is further defined by The Beryl Institute as “integrat[ing] the sum of all interactions, every encounter among patients, families and care partners and the healthcare workforce. It is driven by the culture of healthcare organizations and systems that work tirelessly to support a healthcare ecosystem that operates within the breadth of the care continuum into the communities they serve and the ever-changing environmental landscapes in which they are situated.”⁸

What we can gather from the above definitions is that the human experience is made up of many factors across a continuum of care, and cannot be pinpointed to one single interaction.  Experience is grounded in characteristics that are called out in the Qualtrics HxC (Human Experience Cycle); perceptions, expectations, behaviors and attitudes of an organization and how its caregivers will treat the patient and their family.⁵ Over the last decade, the move to human-centered care has been due to the holistic approach of not just caring medically for the patient, but also taking into account all aspects of the patient (mental, spiritual, economical, etc.) and the support system in which they live.

The shift from focusing just on the medical needs of the patient to a more holistic approach has led to many impacts to not only experience, but outcomes as well.  One study found that human-centered practice improved health status and increased the efficiency of care by reducing diagnostic tests and referrals.¹⁷

Best practices for human-centered care

Human-Centered Care best practices focus on aspects that include both the individual needs of the patient in an acute care setting, as well as the socio-economic environment in which they live and interact.  The below practices are intended to care for the patient as a whole and ensure they recover and thrive outside of the hospital setting within their community.

• Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) Questionnaire - used in acute care settings to determine socio-economic needs of the patient post-discharge; once identified, resources are made available for the patient to utilize
• Discharge Calls - calls made to high(er) risk patients post-visit in an effort to help triage needs/questions/side effects before readmission
• Use of Chaplains/Spiritual Care role within acute care settings to identify/meet spiritual needs of patients
• Inclusivity of family members and/or POA in plan of care conversations and discharge instructions/paperwork to ensure multiple sets of ears are listening and understanding next steps for care

How Qualtrics can help

In thinking through how to choose which best practice would impact your patient’s experiences the best, you must first analyze and understand the feedback your patients are providing.  A few Qualtrics solutions that can be utilized to both track and analyze these insights include additional listening posts for post-discharge call experience trends and closed loop ticketing.

• Additional listening posts - Survey tools to conduct follow-up surveys and track post-discharge calls for trends and improvements
• Closed loop ticketing - Utilized to provide service recovery and/or identify opportunity areas within your patient’s experiences and responding to them in a timely manner
• Discover measuring call center interactions - The use of Discover analytics can help identify if you are making good human connections via sentiment analysis, overarching trends, improvement areas, etc.

How communication impacts patient experience

Communication is one of the most important aspects - if not the most important - in any organization within any industry.  Communication is defined by Merriam-Webster as: a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior.⁹  Not so different, the definition of Healthcare Communication as defined by the National Library of Medicine is: “Effective verbal communication is defined as an exchange of information using words understood by the receiver in a way that conveys professional caring and respect.”¹⁰ Communication, although a seemingly simple concept, can be quite complex depending on the situation, individuals included and the context.

Communication not only ensures understanding from all parties involved in the conversation, but can also impact clinical and safety outcomes, as well as trust and comfort of the patient regarding the provider in which they are interacting.  Different aspects of communication include verbal communication (pace, tone, verbiage utilized), non-verbal communication or body language (closed off or open, facial expressions, eye contact, etc.), written communication (paperwork, use of images and/or drawing, etc.), and many others.  Utilization of each of these aspects is needed to ensure understanding from the patient and their family members.  Another important aspect of communication is one’s emotional intelligence, which can be defined as the ability to understand, manage and express one’s own emotions.  Emotional intelligence is especially important in healthcare, as caregivers can care for many patients that range in acuity within one shift, and they must know how to ground themselves after one interaction before moving into another interaction.  Without the emotional intelligence awareness and use of grounding between interactions, caregivers risk bringing the emotions from one conversation to the next conversation, which could erode the foundation of trust they have built with the patient based on previous conversations.

Best practices for communication

The below practices are intended to ensure clear and transparent communication whenever possible, therefore building trust between the patient and their care team, while also ensuring understanding and helping patients feel as if they are a partner in their care.

• Narrating care / caring out loud - Verbalizing what you are doing as you are doing it while in the patient’s presence.  This eliminates the inevitable human trait of assumption, while also allowing the patient to feel more involved and in more control of their care.
• Plain language / health Literacy - Communicating transparently and in a way the patient can understand.  Studies show that the average American has a 6th grade reading level; in knowing this, ensure you are not utilizing medical jargon or acronyms and taking the time to explain care plans.
• Teach back - this is an educational method where the care team explains aspects of the patient’s care to them, then asks them to repeat back the information in their own words.  By doing this, the care provider knows whether the patient needs more education or if they understand what was explained to them, therefore ensuring a transfer of knowledge.
• Understand the patient’s preferred communication style - when working with the patient, identify their preferred communication and learning style.  This will help them understand and feel more a part of their care, while also helping the care team be as effective as possible with communication and instructions.
• Utilize multiple forms of communication - when speaking with patients and their family members, utilize multiple modes of communication.  Verbally speak to their plan of care, but also write it on the whiteboard, or utilize written materials for educational purposes.
• Grounding techniques - Techniques meant to help caregivers pause and ground themselves before interacting with patients and their family.  Examples of grounding techniques are: Breath Grounding - Box breathing, inhale for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, exhale for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, repeat 3-4 times; Sensory Grounding - placing your hand on the doorframe of the patient’s room and taking 2 deep breathes before walking in; Anchoring - Focusing on a sound, smell or image around you and take a few deep breaths.

Putting it all together

It’s no surprise that the XM Institute chose 2025 as The Year of Connection. Connection is central to experiences across the board and connecting with patients and their loved ones is more important than ever for healthcare organizations to thrive in an ever changing environment. Based on trends identified in the most recent XM Institute 2025 Consumer Trend Report, today’s consumers want heightened privacy and personalization, as well as having heightened expectations in organizations, which may lead to a decline in loyalty if not met.  In order to stay ahead of these trends, healthcare organizations must find ways to personalize the care they provide to their patients, and one of the ways to do so is through connection.

Connecting with patients can take a variety of forms, such as a warm welcome as patients enter through the doors of the hospital, or explaining in plain language what is going to happen during a procedure, to including loved ones during the discharge process to ensure everyone knows how to care for the patient when they get home. Three key areas to bake into your practice daily to ensure connections are genuine and build trust include empathy, human-centered care and communication.

When best practices from these areas are utilized to build connections with patients and their loved ones, organizations not only see impacts to their goals, but also impacts on patient safety, adherence to care plans, reduction in readmissions, and an increased overall trust and loyalty to the brand.

Qualtrics strives to be a trusted partner to help you identify ways to improve connections with your patients. Combining the knowledge and experience of Qualtrics’ team of experts and its robust platform of tools allows you to gain feedback from your patients quickly, identify sentiment and insights via quantitative and qualitative visualizations of the data, and act on these findings to improve. Learning to connect more effectively, efficiently and personally with patients will become the differentiator in the competitive healthcare landscape.

Citations

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