NRC Health’s 2023 Experience Perspective and trends report captures key data and insights from:

Benchmarks have their place, but it’s just as important to focus on actual improvement within your organization itself – to benchmark against yourself.

“At heart of each leader’s purpose in utilizing benchmarks is the drive to continually improve their business outcomes. Embracing a culture that strives to be better tomorrow is more important than aspiring to a particular benchmark." ~Michael Goldberg, MBA, MS Former Executive Director, Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Northwell Health

Why? It is entirely possible to maintain or even improve on a percentile basis if performance is declining, as long as other organizations are declining at the same rate or faster.

You can make meaningful progress on initiatives to improve patient outcomes but lose sight of the benefits they are generating if performance falls short solely against an external benchmark. Without a similar focus on raw-score improvement within your organization, benchmarks can distract attention from the desired behaviors and outcomes you are trying to achieve.

NRC Health’s Experience data clearly reveals that preferred language has a significant impact on:

• How much a patient trusts a provider
• Whether they feel they were heard
• The need for subsequent follow-up

Seeing that Spanish-speakers are more likely to leave healthcare encounters with unaddressed questions or concerns can spark action to provide better care for all patients, foster loyalty and trust, and reduce disparities in health outcomes.

Human Understanding^® is a direct path to equity, a crucial marker of excellent, ethical care. The logic is straightforward: If patients are treated as unique people, they are more likely to receive care that fits the context of their lives and achieves their health goals.

	Effectiveness Patient-Centeredness Safety
+
	Communication Cleanliness

Quality drives a positive reputation and loyal patient base. But what does quality mean to patients? NRC Health’s 2023 Experience Perspective includes new insights that quality-driven organizations will need to create better outcomes.

	Effectiveness Patient-Centeredness Safety
+
	Communication Cleanliness

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) established the six domains of quality: Safe, Effective, Patient-centered, Timely, Efficient, Equitable.

We’ve discovered through our national Market Insights study that only three of the IOM domains signal quality for more than half of healthcare consumers.

But what’s more, consumers highlighted two additional domains – not explicitly outlined in the IOM report.

Part 03 of the 2023 Experience Perspective will help your team understand and act on what matters most to patients when it comes to quality: Effectiveness, Patient-Centeredness, Safety + Communication, Cleanliness.

NRC Health is working with experience leaders from major medical centers to help them use fundamentals to move from aspiration to action. Trust - built through Human Understanding - has emerged as the key driver impacting the patient’s experience. It’s a simple yet foundational pathway to better outcomes, experiences, and loyalty that elevates organizational performance and returns joy to the practice of medicine.

But what are the fundamentals that help get us there?

Beyond tactics, the Perspective focuses on a short list of universal strategies that can quickly reframe attention on what matters most including:

• Start with alignment – a top-to-bottom reconnection to “the why” of experience.
• Develop relational communication behaviors that make people feel heard, respected, and loved.
• Put your frontline first with solutions that reduce burden and deepen impact.

	Being treated as unique is the #1 driver of likelihood-to-recommend (NPS).
	Only 38% of patients report being treated as unique.

	Being treated as unique is the #1 driver of likelihood-to-recommend (NPS).
	Only 38% of patients report being treated as unique.

NRC Health’s 2023 Experience Perspective has the answers, insights, and trends you need to succeed.

Patients want to be treated as more than a number or aggregated data. Providing the highest quality of care requires a deep understanding of individual circumstances, needs, and expectations. Human Understanding means knowing and acting on what matters most to each patient as a unique person.

But what does that look like in practice?

In 2022, the Human Understanding Institute held a series of diverse focus in groups to find out. Participants highlighted many behavioral signs of Human Understanding – things like ‘recognize me as ME’ and ‘see the big picture of my life.’ Overall, their responses paint a clear picture of what patients are asking for:

Connect with me. Listen to me. Partner with me.

It sounds simple, but in healthcare, even straightforward concepts can be hard to execute consistently. And data from our national Market Insights study confirm there’s room for improvement – only 38% of patients report that everyone treated them as unique in their most recent healthcare experience. At the same time, data from our Experience surveys, most gathered within 48 hours of a clinical encounter, reinforce the importance of treating patients as unique people: It’s the #1 driver of Likelihood-to-Recommend and the Net Promoter Score (NPS) for your organization.