The Beryl Institute recently released its study The State of Patient Experience in American Hospitals, the purpose of which was to “gather information about what American hospitals are actually doing to improve the patient experience.”

It yielded some interesting findings overall, and offered a glimpse at how we as an industry may potentially be looked to to help address the overall quest to improve the patient experience.

The 790 respondents from 660 different organizations over all 50 states and the District of Columbia were asked 33 questions in an online survey. They represented both individual hospitals and health groups/systems from rural, urban, and suburban locales. Some takeaways from the findings include:

  • Patient experience is a top priority among hospitals and health systems;
  • Hospital professionals are mostly optimistic about the progress being made to improve the patient experience, but show room to improve ;
  • Hospitals are generally addressing patient experience with small committees, though more than one in 10 have established a patient experience leadership role;
  • Support from senior leadership is the biggest driving force behind patient experience efforts, while cultural resistance remains a challenge; and
  • Tactical change is underway and focused on a few key issues.

According to the study, some of the issues identified as being in respondents’ top three priorities regarding patient experience include noise reduction, improved communication (in general as well as among nurses and physicians), patient-centered care, decreased wait times, patient safety, and facility upgrades.

There are a number of ways in which the healthcare design industry can take note of what is weighing on administrators’ minds regarding the patient experience and work to tackle some of those priorities alongside them.