Physician practice leaders should be at least a little scared, strategically of course, about their future relationship with patients.
There’s a growing movement of patients ‘quietly quitting’ their doctor or their medical group, according to a Physician’s Practice article (full transparency: I wrote it). Patient loyalty is very much at stake today as younger patients care more about the experience and are six times more likely to switch providers than older generations; Gen-Z even more so than Millennials.
What I see from Sage’s work across the landscape of healthcare providers, payers, and health IT companies, is that practice leaders are facing the urgent need to establish or advance trust with patients as a retention strategy. Building trust, in turn, works in lockstep with essentially reinventing the experiences that practices deliver to patients to have a lasting impact of engagement, outcomes, and financial sustainability.
Patient Experience: A Priority Across Healthcare
With the growing number of urgent care centers and hospitals continuing to acquire physician practices en masse, medical groups are under more pressure than ever to retain the patients they have and attract new ones.
Adding to the complexity, hospitals and health systems are also focusing more on the patient experience, which threatens to negatively impact medical practices that neglect it. Sage’s annual survey of 101 C-suite leaders, in fact, illustrates that patient experience is the top priority for 2027 — outpacing the long-standing priority to optimize their EMR. That’s a strategic shift from the 25% who ranked patient experience high in 2023, the 36% in 2022, and only 14% in 2020.
Regardless of the organization’s size and reach, we know that creating more engaging and effective patient experiences begins with trust. Physician practices stand at a critical juncture for trust. While patients have traditionally indicated that they trust their doctors more than anyone else, there appear to be cracks in that trust. In 2020, 77% of Americans ranked medical doctors as having high ethics in Gallup’s annual poll, but in 2026 that dipped to just 57%.
Improving the Patient Experience: Investments Drive ROI
Practice leaders may be tempted to scoff at the investment necessary to build better patient experiences. But I recommend against giving into that temptation and, instead, considering the upsides, notably more effective patient engagement over the long haul, and the promise of ROI.
For example, Accenture found that 9 in 10 patients will stay with a doctor when they encounter a ‘very easy’ experience. Additional benefits are far-reaching: patients are more likely to attend annual visits, engage in preventative and elective care, and they are less likely to delay or avoid appointments. What’s more, those patients are positioned to come along for other pieces of the modernization journey practices undertake, including using digital tools and participating in new care delivery models.
Laying the foundation of trust to create better patient experiences also yields financial returns. Deloitte’s Center for Health Solutions explains: “Investments in patient experience increase costs but increase revenue even more.”
If you are interested in learning more about how Sage helps providers and practices acquire patients, improve engagement and enhance patient satisfaction, we would love to hear from you.
