How a Major Southeast Health System Went from Never Meeting Its Patient Experience Goal to Exceeding It Three Years in a Row

A stubborn scorecard gap, a hardworking clinical team, and a structured development program that changed everything.

The Challenge

For a major southeast integrated health system with more than a century of service to its community, patient experience was not a new priority — it was a stated value. The physician group, comprising more than 950 physicians and advanced practice providers across 100 practice locations, had set an ambitious patient experience balanced scorecard goal and had publicly committed to becoming a renowned medical group for patient experience. The aspiration was clear. The results were not.

Despite genuine effort from a hardworking clinical team, the physician group had never once met its patient experience balanced scorecard goal since the organization began tracking it. Progress had stalled. The gap between aspiration and measured performance was not closing. For a team that cared deeply about the quality of care it provided, the persistent failure to move the needle was demoralizing — not for lack of commitment, but for lack of a clear path forward.

The presenting challenge was not disengagement. It was the exhausting combination of high effort and flat results. Physicians and advanced practice providers were showing up, working hard, and still not seeing the improvement that both they and their patients deserved. The organization recognized it needed an outside perspective — a strategic partner who could bring both diagnostic rigor and a structured pathway to change. That is when HXF entered the picture. 

The Solution

HXF partnered with the physician group's Director of Academics and Medical Education to design and deploy a patient loyalty certification program — a structured, evidence-based curriculum built around HXF's proprietary CARES communication framework to provide clinicians with a practical, empathy-focused model for delivering highly-reliable patient care experiences. Critically, the program was designed not as a compliance exercise, but as a pathway toward what HXF terms authentic practice: a clinician's felt connection to their reason to practice, their professional identity, and the fulfillment they derive from their work.

The engagement began with four pilot cohorts of cross-specialty physicians and advanced practice providers. Each participant received a personalized CARES assessment identifying their individual gaps across the five core competencies, followed by targeted upskilling and a teach-back component requiring them to share what they had learned with their own clinical teams. HXF coaches facilitated education and development sessions covering patient experience fundamentals, patient perception, and the intersection of empathy and compassion with quality and safety outcomes — all delivered virtually to accommodate the clinical schedules of a working physician group.

The results of the pilot cohorts were compelling enough to warrant significant expansion. The program scaled to 15 cohorts over the course of the engagement, ultimately reaching more than 350 physicians and APPs — nearly 30 percent of the entire physician group. Cohort participants who completed the certification became eligible for two additional advanced courses, and the sustained appetite for development was evident: nearly 150 participants voluntarily enrolled in supplemental training beyond the core program. All sessions were conducted off-hours, underscoring the genuine commitment of the clinicians involved.

The Result

The outcomes were unambiguous. Every physician and APP who completed the program showed measurable improvement in their national patient experience rankings. On average, participants gained four raw score points — a shift that translated to a 10 to 20 national ranking improvement per clinician. Perhaps more telling than the numerical gains was what clinicians reported about their own experience of the work: 97 percent of program participants said they felt close to their authentic practice goal, reflecting a meaningful reconnection to professional purpose that no metric alone could capture. For a physician workforce that had been working hard without seeing results, this shift in felt fulfillment signaled something more durable than a score improvement.

At the system level, the impact was equally decisive. The physician group met or exceeded its patient experience balanced scorecard goal for three consecutive years — in some cases doubling its prior success rates — after never having met the goal in any prior measurement period. The group advanced into the top 25 percent of all medical groups nationally through this process. A goal that had once felt perpetually out of reach became, through structured development and authentic engagement, a standard the organization could consistently achieve.

The legacy of the engagement extends beyond the cohort participants themselves. The curriculum's reach expanded organically to include practice managers and the call center team, creating a more comprehensive, system-wide foundation for patient experience. The near-150 physicians and APPs who voluntarily pursued supplemental training represent an internal community of practice that continues to carry the work forward. What began as an effort to move a stubborn scorecard metric became something the organization could rightly call a transformation — one built not on external pressure, but on the intrinsic motivation of clinicians who found their way back to why they practice.