The chief experience officer role was first implemented at a health system in 2007 at Cleveland Clinic. Today, more than 50 hospitals and health systems across the U.S. have a CXO in their C-suite.
The field of patient and customer experience has become an emerging organizational strategic priority as healthcare continues to evolve to meet society’s demands, according to Sven Gierlinger, inaugural CXO of New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health; he has held the role since 2014.
“From there, CXOs joined C-suites overseeing leadership alignment, patient-centered culture and care delivery models, achievement of performance in federally mandated surveys, leveraging the ‘voice’ of patients, implementing evidence-based best practices in experience design and creating educational and training programs,” Mr. Gierlinger said.
Becker’s connected with 13 health system CXOs to discuss the evolution of the role.
Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: When did the role emerge within hospitals and health systems?
Amy Searls. Chief Experience Officer of Prime Healthcare (Ontario, Calif.): The title began gaining traction around 2007, when Cleveland Clinic appointed the first CXO and launched the office of patient experience. I remember attending their early patient experience conference and realizing how revolutionary that was.
Hospitals had always had executives for finance, operations and clinical quality, but no one whose sole focus was the human experience within hospital walls. That changed when value-based purchasing linked reimbursement and public rankings to patient perception. For the first time, how patients felt about their care directly influenced performance and revenue.
Suddenly, patient experience was no longer seen as “soft” — it became essential. Quality alone was no longer enough; outcomes and experience became inseparable. The voice of the patient needed an owner in the C-suite.
That’s when the chief patient experience officer role truly emerged, as the leader responsible for transforming culture, standardizing communication, guiding leader rounding, and restoring the human connection in healthcare. The CPXO became the person who consistently asks, “What does this feel like for the patient?”
Eugene Scioscia Jr., MD. Chief Experience Officer of Allegheny Health Network (Pittsburgh): This role emerged nearly a decade ago in the Allegheny Health Network. I suspect this role gained popularity with the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, at which time the concept of “pay for performance” was introduced, especially for the largest healthcare insurer: the government. “Pay for performance” evolved into value-based care and with it arose a need to “measure” the quality of care, including the patient’s perspective in addition to the physician’s and hospital’s perspective on quality. Hence while Consumer Assessment of Providers and Systems have existed for decades, they would now become one of the key metrics for patient experience and quality.
Julie Kennedy Oehlert, DNP, RN. Chief Experience & Brand Officer of ECU Health (Greenville, N.C.): Sonia Rhodes became vice president of customer strategy and The Sharp Experience at Sharp HealthCare in July 1993 and held that role until July 2011. Though her official title was not “chief experience officer,” she pioneered many of the strategies known today as “patient experience” and was the thought leader of the Sharp’s experience transformation efforts during that time, including the creation and leadership of The Sharp Experience initiative. Her work at Sharp is often cited as one of the earliest and most influential examples of a CXO-like role in healthcare, even before the title became widely adopted. The Sharp Experience transformed how healthcare viewed and responded to the experiences of patients.
Q: Has it become less common in hospitals and health systems?
Steve Basilotto. Chief Experience Officer of Froedtert ThedaCare (Menomonee Falls, Wis.): There hasn’t necessarily been a decline, rather a refinement in the role’s focus. Most of those same 50-plus health systems still have this executive-level position, with the position including functional responsibilities across departments such as marketing, communications, digital operations, analytics and more.
As hyperinflation has increased healthcare delivery costs and impacted the larger economic landscape, the urgency to evolve consumer experience is even greater. Access is a primary challenge for most health systems and offers opportunities for consumer-driven transformation by prioritizing efforts to improve experience, efficiencies and outcomes.
Laura Irvine. Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy & Experience Officer of Texas Health Resources (Arlington): From where I sit, the focus on consumer experience is more vital than ever. As our communities grow and diversify, so do their expectations — and the CXO role is about meeting people where they are, whether that’s in a hospital, at home or through a virtual interaction.
If some organizations are shifting away from the title, I suspect it’s less about deprioritizing experience and more about broadening the scope. Experience intersects with digital transformation, innovation and access — so some systems may be folding it into larger strategic roles.
Therese Hudson-Jinks, DNP, RN. Chief Nursing Officer, Chief Experience Officer and Senior Vice President of Patient Care Services at Tufts Medical Center (Burlington, Mass.): In recent years, many healthcare organizations have streamlined their leadership structures due to economic pressures and the increasing emphasis on efficiency. Some hospitals and health systems have combined the roles of CXO with other C-suite roles in order to target a more unified approach to experience and operational management. As a result, while the role of CXO remains vital for many organizations, its integration with other executive roles has led to a decrease in standalone CXO positions, overall.
At Tufts Medical Center, the CXO role was created in combination with that of the chief nursing officer. This has allowed best practices to be folded into the care delivery model, while enhancing measured results.
Edison Bond Jr., EdD. Chief Patient Experience Officer of Episcopal Health Services (Far Rockaway, N.Y.): In the past few years, some health systems have restructured, merging the CXO position with broader roles, including health equity. This trend doesn’t necessarily reflect a decline in importance, but rather an acknowledgment that patient experience, employee engagement, health equity and social determinants of health are deeply interconnected.
AS: If anything, I see the role evolving and expanding, not disappearing. Many hospitals are blending experience with broader portfolios such as:
- Experience + patient advocacy
- Experience + culture and engagement
- Experience + reputation and brand
The reason is simple: experience is no longer about surveys. It’s about consumer choice, reputation, loyalty and talent retention.
Where we once focused solely on HCAHPS as the primary measure of success, we now also track brand reputation, new patient acquisition, repeat visits, retention, and market share. Patients now behave more like consumers, and staff are demanding workplaces rooted in respect, recognition and purpose.
Sven Gierlinger. Chief Experience Officer of Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.): According to the 2025 Beryl Institute State of Patient Experience, almost 80% of organizations say they have an organizational mandate for experience. Also, 42% of organizations reported having a single experience leader, which is slightly higher when compared to 2023. Despite these statistics, the CXO community has noticed roles being eliminated or combined with other executive-level responsibilities. Potential reasons around this shift may be due to financial constraints and/or the need to consolidate leadership roles/efforts. I personally think it is extremely short-sighted since the role of experience leader has never been more important than now. Especially since patients are demanding a more seamless, integrated and coordinated experience from the healthcare industry.
Q: How else has the role evolved in recent years?
Rick Evans. Chief Experience Officer of NewYork-Presbyterian (New York City): In the age of consumerism, the CXO role is definitely evolving to a strategic leader who is now focused on the entirety of the patient journey. At NewYork-Presbyterian, this has meant focusing on both the patient and the consumer experience. We are all on a healthcare journey where sometimes we find ourselves a patient in an exam room or hospital bed. At other times, we are a healthcare consumer searching for services or an appointment. It’s important that we measure and improve the entire journey, from customer to patient and back again. This means focusing on bedside care that patients experience but also the experience that consumers and potential patients have when they try to access our services.
Seanna-Kaye Denham-Wilks, PhD. Chief Experience Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals | Kings County (New York City): The chief experience officer role has been evolving nationwide; however, the recalibration that we are seeing is not one size fits all. Certainly these trends are related to fiscal realities, the deepening understanding that everyone within the healthcare setting is a custodian of experience, as well as the impact of emerging AI technologies in improving operational efficiencies and quality. While some health systems have consolidated the CXO responsibilities into other leadership roles, others have expanded the visibility of the CXO in response to the imperative to consider the human experience at every possible touchpoint. It is clear that healthcare outcomes are better when there is a comprehensive caregiver belief in the importance of the patient experience. As a clinician and CXO, I see even more need for healthcare systems to value the role of the experience leader. Within the work that I have been leading, the evolution has looked like championing the role of the public hospital in the amplification of patient and family involvement in and outside of episodes of care; emphasizing a multi-year, multi-pronged reframing of our organizational culture; and taking a tiered approach to change management that centers joy in work and wellness at work as the path to engagement.
Suzy Jaeger. Chief Patient Experience & Access Officer of Children’s Hospital Colorado (Aurora): Children’s Hospital Colorado has chosen to focus on two components of experience at the senior leader level of the organization with separate but aligned strategies: patients and their families and also team members, which includes employees, faculty, volunteers and community providers. For patient and family experience, we have prioritized a variety of access-related initiatives, including improved functionality of MyChart, online appointment scheduling, streamlined clinical call management and enhanced pre-visit preparations and experience. Our work on team member experience centers on strengthening our inclusive, collaborative culture by investing in enhanced communication channels, training and developing the skill sets of leaders, optimizing scope of practice and creating career pipelines and pathways.
Scott Macicek, MD. Chief Experience Officer of Manning Family Children’s (New Orleans): From a physician standpoint, my role as a chief experience officer has evolved to both proactively enhancing the experience through dyad partnership with our nursing leadership to enhance the overall experience, and when needed, to function as a physician coach/mentor to help guide opportunities to enhance communication with our patients and families. Also, proactive rounding particularly with both our day and night teams in order to connect and ensure that the care experience is optimized 24/7 as it does not stop for our patients and families. From the unique role of CXO at a children’s hospital, we have an opportunity to create times of fun and engagement that hopefully give kids the opportunity to find moments of joy in the midst of the stress of being sick and in the hospital and it is a gift to be able to be part of that experience. We are currently building Walker’s Imaginarium, which will be very similar to having a children’s museum attached to our hospital to create incredible opportunities for creating those moments of joy for our patients and their families while they are at Manning Family Children’s.
Danita Cohen. Chief Experience Officer of University Medical Center (Las Vegas): Even as hospitals are challenged to provide high-quality care while facing increased financial burdens, healthcare systems that perform at the pinnacle also recognize and champion the fact that the hospitality of healthcare is equally as important as the medicine itself.
Here at UMC in Las Vegas, our leadership team has demonstrated its dedication to ensuring patients feel welcome, cared for, seen and supported throughout their medical journey. We are committed to providing the caliber of care and navigation that people expect and deserve in the hospitality capital of the world. Organizations that excel in providing personalized care will continue to be the healthcare organizations of choice for patients. To truly treat patients with the care they deserve, we as healthcare systems must genuinely prioritize the experiences we provide to our patients and their loved ones.
LI: At its core, experience is about making care easier to access and navigate. But healthcare is complex — and that’s why the role has grown. It’s no longer just about what happens inside our facilities. It’s about supporting people across every stage of health and well-being, wherever they are.
That means blending clinical excellence with emerging technologies and designing tools that meet people where they are. Texas Health Connect, our mobile-first digital front door, is a great example — it brings together all the ways someone can access care, from virtual visits to urgent care to specialty services, in one place. It helps people understand their options and take the next step with confidence.
EB: Today, the CXO’s influence extends beyond improving satisfaction scores, it encompasses advancing organizational culture, workforce engagement, community trust and equitable access to care. At its core, the role continues to evolve toward a unified mission: humanizing healthcare by ensuring every interaction reflects dignity, compassion and partnership between caregivers and the communities they serve.
