Patient experience consulting helps private practices and hospitals turn routine healthcare visits into memorable experiences. You’ve probably had at least one negative experience with a doctor who left you feeling ignored, unheard, and unimportant. You’re not alone, and that’s often the last encounter you had with the physician who made you feel that way. 

Today's patients aren’t the passive participants in their healthcare journey that was the norm a few decades ago; they’re informed, empowered, and ready to demand better from their healthcare providers. 

Patient experience consulting allows you to walk in your patients' shoes, from the moment they book their first appointment to after their first treatment. Understanding your patients’ journey helps you to consistently deliver quality care that addresses their needs. Happy, satisfied patients lead to better online reviews and a healthier revenue stream. 

Why the Focus on Patient Experience Consulting is Growing in North America

Getting valuable insights from understanding patient experience gives you a competitive edge in today’s healthcare market. Some of the reasons why there’s an increased focus on patient experience include: 

1. Cultural Shift Toward Patient-Centered Care

Patients are now armed with more information than they’ve ever had when making decisions regarding their healthcare, thanks to the information age brought by the internet, which makes it easier than it’s ever been to research any topic. 

Patients now shop for healthcare providers similarly to how they choose restaurants. Today’s patients value social proof highly, often making decisions based on past reviews and a social media presence. These patients also have less tolerance for paternalistic doctor monologues. Instead, they expect transparency, respect, and shared decision-making. They also expect digital-health tools like telemedicine that make getting care more convenient for them. 

A 2022 survey revealed that over 70% of patients used online reviews from platforms like Google while selecting healthcare providers. 

2. Quality Measures and Financial Incentives

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey directly ties Medicare reimbursement rates to patient satisfaction. The growing demand for value-based care makes patient satisfaction just as vital as clinical outcomes.

3. Lessons from Public Health Crises

COVID-19 exposed coordination gaps, a lack of empathy, and disparity of access, particularly along economic and racial lines, in the healthcare industry. As a result, more patients now demand clear explanations and equitable treatment.

AI tools like ChatGPT empower self-advocacy. Patients now show up for appointments armed with their research. ChatGPT is capable of providing information in an accessible way as well as making logical connections across research gaps. 

Furthermore, ChatGPT has power in the fact that it does not deny the existence altogether of symptoms–a common complaint from patients about their physicians–but instead looks logically at how the reported symptoms could occur. These symptoms which are a large part of the puzzle then help guide the AI in guiding the patients into learning about bodily systems with logical conclusions, system functions that many US physicians do not know or understand due to educational gaps where these physicians were taught to treat with medication or interventions at a surface level rather than learn how to identify root cause-and-effect occurrences.   

4. Rise of Chronic and Complex Conditions

Healthcare organizations are moving away from one-size-fits-all approaches that leave many patients with complex conditions like spinal leaks or thyroid imbalances misdiagnosed and funneled through unnecessary treatments. 

Patient-centered care helps to catch such cases before they fall through the cracks and end up with extra treatments, higher medical bills, and poor outcomes. A patient experience consultant bridges these gaps, improving care coordination and reducing wasted resources. 

Why You Need a Patient Experience Consultant Across Departments

A dedicated patient experience consultant brings human-centered design into every aspect of your organization. 

Branding and Marketing

Telling patients you care isn’t enough to earn their loyalty. It’s even more important that you show that you care. Patient experience consultants audit website copy, social media messaging, and patient education materials to ensure the language used is clear, inclusive, and contains search terms that include search engine optimization (SEO) terms that increase visibility. 

Business Development

Some healthcare organizations lose patients because of non-clinical issues like clunky online portals or confusing billing statements. 

A patient experience consulting agency can help to identify revenue leaks such as missed opportunities for follow-ups, high no-show rates, and untapped referral networks. They can help you build chronic care programs that increase the lifetime value of patients. 

One example is a speech clinic that required patients with aphasia to call to make an appointment. The patient experience is rife with stories of patients being told via email that they must call to book an appointment when communication via email was perfectly functional and the patient had explained that they could not communicate verbally at all or without being in great pain. A common theme among HealthTech startup clinics by disabled women in partnership with physicians is that of text-based communication as an option, as these disabled CEOs understood where other clinics were failing. 

Clinical Operations

It’s often the smallest missteps a healthcare organization makes that cause the most frustrations. Patient experience consultants can shadow patient visits, analyze survey feedback, and train staff on empathetic communication, cultural competence, and health literacy. They can act as “translators” for patients with complex cases, explaining the journey so patients feel understood and cared for, as well as explaining to physicians common descriptions of what certain conditions feel like to avoid confusion.

For instance, patients describing “a lot of pressure” against their skull with a spinal leak doesn’t automatically mean that they have high intracranial pressure, as so many physicians assume without further assessments such as a brain MRI. The brain itself feels heavier without full buoyancy and is leaning against the skull, and can lean in any direction. This is also a misconception that spinal leaks only produce pain at the back of the head, and front-of-the-head pains mean high intracranial pressure.   

Adding a patient experience consultant to your team ensures that marketing claims match real-world experiences, building patient trust and loyalty every step of the way. 

The Scope of a Patient Experience Consultant’s Role

Some of the things a patient experience consultant can’t help with include:

• Diagnose or prescribe treatments
• Interpret lab results without appropriate credentials
• Impersonate licensed healthcare providers
• Make clinical decisions for healthcare providers as part of the team

Some of the things patient experience consultants can help with include:

• Help patients make sense of medical terminology and prepare meaningful questions for care teams. 
• Analyze feedback to pinpoint service gaps and recommend quality-improvement initiatives. 
• Facilitate smoother handoffs between departments, reducing errors and delays.
• Train staff on bias, trauma-informed care, and clear communication.
• Teach clinicians about health conditions based on case studies, relevant research, and anecdotal information gathered from online communities and patient interviews, as well as lived experience. 
• Advise organizations on user-friendly digital tools like patient portals, telehealth platforms, and appointment-reminder systems. 

Consultants operate under strict compliance frameworks, collaborating with clinical leadership to ensure legal and ethical boundaries are never crossed.

Take Action: Unlock Patient-Centered Success

You can’t afford to treat patient experience as an afterthought, as it has emerged as one of the primary factors patients consider when choosing healthcare providers. You improve outcomes, protect your revenue, and build lasting trust when you go the extra mile to make your patients’ experience as pleasant as possible. 

Patient experience is no longer a marketing add-on; it’s central to the ethics and economics of modern healthcare. A knowledgeable patient experience consultant brings systems thinking, human-centered design, and communication expertise into care, marketing, and day-to-day operations.

Ready to make your practice stand out? Visit our Patient Experience Services page to start transforming your practice, one satisfied patient at a time.