Healthcare organizations have more patient feedback, performance dashboards, and experience data at their fingertips than ever before. But new research from NRC Health (NASDAQ: NRC) suggests that what distinguishes high-performing health systems isn’t how much information they access. It’s how effectively they turn that information into action.

In its latest nSight report, From Signal to System: Experience Management Everywhere, NRC Health analyzed data from 376 healthcare organizations, comparing 41 high-performing organizations with 335 others to identify the practices associated with exceptional patient experiences.

The findings reveal a striking distinction: High-performing organizations closed an average of 2.01 service alerts per active platform user, compared with just 0.63 among other organizations—more than three times as many. Yet platform participation was virtually identical between the two groups, at approximately 6.2 active users per 100 clinicians.

The implication for healthcare leaders is significant: Simply collecting more feedback or expanding access to experience data may not be enough to improve performance. What matters is building the organizational alignment, accountability, and everyday processes that transform insights into meaningful action.

“Healthcare has spent decades measuring patient experiences, yet we continue to ask why meaningful, sustainable improvement is so difficult to achieve,” said Jennifer Baron, Chief Experience Officer at NRC Health. “Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question. In an increasingly complex healthcare environment, we have an opportunity to learn from organizations that are achieving exceptional results and uncover what truly sets them apart. This research reveals that success isn’t simply about collecting more data, but about building the leadership capabilities, shared accountability, and everyday practices that turn Human Understanding into action. By applying these lessons, health systems can identify untapped opportunities within their own organizations and move more quickly and confidently toward delivering the experiences people deserve.”

“The difference between collecting feedback and creating meaningful change is what happens next,” said Helen Hrdy, Chief Operating Officer at NRC Health. “Our research reinforces what we see every day in our partnerships with leading health systems: exceptional experiences are built when teams listen, act, and continuously improve. Experience management can’t be the responsibility of one department or a handful of individuals. It has to become part of how the entire organization works, with Human Understanding at the center of every decision.”

Five Practices That Distinguish High-Performing Healthcare Organizations

The research identified five interconnected dimensions of effective experience management, forming the foundation of NRC Health’s Experience Management Everywhere (EME) framework:

  • ALIGN — Establish a shared purpose.

  • LISTEN — Understand the complete healthcare experience.

  • ACT — Turn feedback into meaningful responses.

  • BUILD — Embed experience management into everyday work.

  • EVOLVE — Make continuous learning part of the culture.

Together, these dimensions point toward a broader shift in how healthcare organizations approach experience management: from isolated measurement activities to coordinated, organization-wide practices that connect what people experience with how organizations operate.

Moving Beyond Measurement to Enterprise-Wide Improvement

The research also challenges the assumption that greater technology adoption or more platform activity necessarily distinguishes high-performing organizations.

Instead, the most meaningful differences appeared in how organizations distributed actionable feedback, engaged leadership, involved more employees in resolving concerns, and integrated experience intelligence into routine workflows.

“What struck me most about this research was that high-performing organizations were listening to a broader range of voices, but weren’t necessarily accessing their data more frequently,” said William R. England, Ph.D., Strategic Advisor – Research at NRC Health. “The distinction was in how they put those insights to work. That’s an important finding because it gives healthcare leaders something more valuable than another checklist. It offers an opportunity to learn from organizations achieving exceptional results and translate those lessons into meaningful improvements in their own everyday practices.”

For healthcare executives confronting workforce pressures, rising consumer expectations, and increasing operational complexity, the findings suggest an opportunity to reconsider experience management as an enterprise-wide responsibility rather than the function of a single department.

A Practical Framework for Healthcare Leaders

The report outlines five actions healthcare organizations can take to strengthen experience management:

  1. Connect improvement initiatives to clearly defined organizational outcomes.

  2. Expand listening to include patients, families, employees, consumers, and communities.

  3. Measure the effectiveness of organizational responses to feedback, not simply the volume of feedback collected.

  4. Integrate experience intelligence into existing workflows and everyday responsibilities.

  5. Establish processes for experimentation, learning, and continuous improvement.

The research is observational and identifies associations between organizational practices and high performance rather than establishing causation. Nevertheless, the findings offer a perspective on the behaviors and processes that distinguish organizations delivering exceptional patient experiences.

Access the Full Research and Findings

From Signal to System: Experience Management Everywhere is the latest installment in NRC Health’s nSight research series, which examines emerging trends and opportunities shaping the future of healthcare.

Read the full report at: https://go.nrchealth.com/nSight/experience-management-everywhere

About NRC Health

For more than 45 years, NRC Health (NASDAQ: NRC) has led the charge to humanize healthcare and support organizations in their understanding of each unique individual. Ranked #1 Best in KLAS for Healthcare Experience Management in three of the last four years, NRC Health holds a commitment to Human Understanding that helps leading healthcare systems get to know each person they serve not as point-in-time insights, but in the context of an ongoing relationship.

Guided by its uniquely empathic heritage, patient-focused approach, unmatched market research, and emphasis on consumer preferences, NRC Health is transforming the healthcare experience and creating strong outcomes for patients and entire healthcare systems.

For more information, visit www.nrchealth.com.

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