As we enter the second half of 2026, several trends are becoming clear. Financial pressure, expanding experience portfolios and federal policy changes are reshaping the future of patient experience. Together, they reveal an important reality: organizations that continue to invest strategically in experience will be better positioned than those that do not.
Four signals to watch:
1. Budget cuts hit patient experience work. First, budget cuts and tighter resource constraints remain a reality for hospitals. This is impacting budgets dedicated to patient experience like it does other parts of hospital operations. All too often, the small teams dedicated to monitoring and improving patient experience take disproportionate hits when budgets are cut. This is happening again in many organizations this year. While everyone must do their part in tougher budget times, I urge C-suite leaders — both administrative and financial — to look carefully at cuts to already very small patient experience teams. During tight budget times, we often hear language like “patient experience is everyone’s job” as we cut full-time employees that work on it every day. We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly — organizations cut patient experience resources, their patient ratings drop and they have to rebuild a program down the line. Patient experience improvement requires expertise and strategic focus, including budget resources.
Fortunately, there is a robust body of knowledge and there are trained experts across the country who can do this work. Patient experience expertise must be maintained for the experience of patients and families to remain compassionate and responsive. Keeping this focus also makes good long-term financial sense. A great experience leads to loyal patients. In the ever more competitive healthcare ecosystem, this is another reason to assure that patient experience remains a top priority.
2. Patient and consumer experience converge. Another dynamic that we see continuing to play out in many markets across the country is the convergence of organizational experience portfolios to encompass both patient and consumer experience. I was speaking with yet another colleague this week who shared that he is now leading his organization’s work not only on patient experience, but also on consumer experience and access. Many chief experience officers are seeing their areas of responsibility move in this direction. Strategically, this makes sense. Traditional patient experience focus has tended to hone in more on episodes of care — hospital admissions, physician office visits or procedural visits. These key interactions absolutely need focused attention to be consistently high quality. However, this approach often misses the reality that patients are on journeys that take them in and out of our facilities. There is a “before” and “after” experience that includes critical interactions such as finding a physician, making an appointment, learning and clarifying personal health issues, and conducting other transactions such as paying bills, getting test results or refilling prescriptions. These experiences too often are fraught with difficulty and go under the radar for measurement and improvement. They are also a huge point of vulnerability for patient leakage. There’s no chance of providing a great experience if we lose patients before they even cross our facility thresholds. These consumer experiences are linked to the patient experiences we measure. Organizations who are looking at these two critical aspects across patient journeys in an integrated way are outpacing their competitors. There are many capable CXO’s who can guide their organizations with this critical work and we are seeing that trend of integrated portfolios continue to emerge across the country as 2026 unfolds.
3. HCAHPS 2.0 results are pending. Beyond organizational strategy, two federal developments also deserve close attention.
First, we are waiting for CMS to share updates on how the new HCAHPS 2.0 survey has performed since its rollout. At the beginning of 2025, an updated HCAHPS survey with new domains focused on team care, the environment and other issues was put into production across the country. CMS publicly reports results for the HCAHPS survey, and HCAHPS ratings are factored into many other hospital rating programs including Leapfrog, Magnet designation, U.S. News rankings and others. Data has been accumulating over the last six quarters (January 2025 through June 2026) and is due to be published any day now. This will give us the first truly comprehensive look at how the revised survey has performed and what patient priorities will be going forward. It is very likely that new questions focused on team care and team communication will shoot to the top of the patient and family priority list. Patient experience leaders are watching carefully to see how this new survey will impact priorities and efforts going forward in our organizations.
4. Grant cuts threaten patient experience measurement. A second development that happened recently at the federal level that impacts patient experience work was the cancellation in July of hundreds of grant awards by HHS. Cancellation notices were sent to hundreds of projects. These included cuts to grants awarded to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that support the ongoing development of standardized measures for patient safety and quality. These include measures for patient experience that are used across the country like CAHPS surveys. These are the backbone of patient experience measurement in the U.S. While there is certainly room for robust debate about these measures and how they can be expanded and improved, they are the envy of the world in terms of standardized patient experience measurement. The cancellation of these grants will impact patient experience measurement and work. There are efforts underway to have these cuts reconsidered, and we will all be watching how this plays out in the weeks and months ahead.
Taken together, these trends point to an important conclusion. Patient experience is becoming more — not less — strategic. Organizations that continue to invest in expertise, broaden their focus across the entire patient journey, and adapt to changing measurement expectations will be better positioned to earn patient trust and harvest the benefits of loyal patients in an increasingly turbulent and competitive environment. The months ahead will test whether organizations will view patient experience as a cost center to trim or as a strategic capability to strengthen.
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