Patient-reported experience is associated with higher future revenue and lower costs of hospitals

Background Despite the established positive association between patient experience and patient volume, the relationship between patient experience and the financial performance of hospitals has not been studied thoroughly. Methods To investigate this relationship, we used longitudinal data from 132 Swiss acute-care hospitals from 2016 to 2019 to examine the associations between patient experience and the proportion of elective patients, revenue, costs, and profits of hospitals. To account for a potential time lag effect, we utilized annual patient experience data and employed multilevel mixed-effects regression modeling to investigate its association with the aforementioned financial performance indicators for the following year. Results Data for private and public hospitals were analyzed both separately and in combination, to account for the different proportions of elective patients in these types of hospitals. The resulting mixed models, revealed that for each year studied, the previous year’s patient experience was positively associated with the current year’s proportion of elective patients (β = 0.09, p = 0.004, all hospitals) and revenue (β = 1789.83, p = 0.037, private hospitals only), and negatively associated with costs (β = − 1191.13, p = 0.017, all hospitals); but not significantly associated with future profits (β = 629.12, p = 0.240, all hospitals). Conclusions This analysis showed that better patient experience is associated with a higher proportion of elective patients, greater revenue, and lower costs. Our findings may assist hospital managers and regulators in identifying strategies to increase revenue and reduce costs.