how poor patient experience affects your bottom line
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Learn how negative patient experiences impact revenue, retention, and reputation—and how improving them drives financial performance
Healthcare organizations know that delivering a great patient experience is vital for creating long-term engagement and quality care. Yet it’s often overlooked how much a poor experience actually costs. When patients encounter long wait times, impersonal outreach, confusing billing, or disjointed communication, they don’t just get frustrated—they leave. And when they leave, they take referrals, revenue, and trust with them. Let’s examine what’s really at stake and what health systems can do to turn the patient experience into a competitive advantage.
missed revenue opportunities
Patients today have more choices than ever. When deciding where to receive care, they choose the easiest system to engage with, starting from the first booking to follow-up care and communication. If your scheduling process is clunky, your digital front door is hard to find, or your messaging is inconsistent, you're likely losing out on appointments that get scheduled elsewhere.
Fix it: Make it easy to connect. That means frictionless scheduling, responsive outreach, and a consistent experience across all touchpoints. A tool like our Healthcare Experience Platform can centralize and streamline these interactions, ensuring patients follow through instead of dropping off.
declining loyalty and retention
A single negative experience can push a patient to look for care elsewhere. Whether it’s a lack of follow-up, a confusing portal, or difficulty getting answers, these moments matter. And once trust is lost, it’s hard to get back.
Fix it: Personalize the journey. Use automation and insights to guide patients through each step of their care with the right message at the right time. From appointment reminders to test result follow-ups, proactive communication builds confidence and encourages patients toward long-term engagement. Download our 2025 Healthcare Campaign Playbook for pre-built campaigns that drive retention.
increased care gaps
When patients fall through the cracks, from missed screenings to forgotten follow-ups or untreated chronic conditions, the cost isn’t just clinical. It leads to higher downstream costs, more acute episodes, and greater strain on your system’s resources.
Fix it: Build smarter patient journeys. Campaigns that educate, nudge, and re-engage patients can help close these gaps. Whether promoting annual wellness visits or nudging preventive screenings, automated outreach keeps care on track and costs down.
inefficient operations
Disjointed communication and siloed tools frustrate patients and burn out your teams. When contact center agents, marketers, and care teams don’t share the same data or tools, the result is delays, duplicative work, and inconsistent messaging.
Fix it: Align your teams on one platform. By uniting marketing and contact center teams with shared tools and real-time insights, you streamline workflows and improve the patient experience across the board. Invest in tools like our Consumer 360, to streamline patient data in one simplified view.
reputation and brand risk
Today’s patients don’t just quietly suffer a poor experience. They share it online, in reviews, and with their networks. A negative patient experience can quickly ripple into reputational damage that’s hard to repair.
Fix it: Turn experience into a brand strength. With coordinated campaigns, timely feedback collection, and proactive engagement, you can build a reputation for putting patients first and backing it up with action.
patient experience isn’t just a quality metric—it’s a growth strategy
The true cost of a poor experience goes far beyond one interaction. But with the right strategy and technology, it’s fixable. And when you get it right, the rewards are clear: stronger relationships, better outcomes, and measurable impact across your organization.
