Key Insights From the 10th Annual NGPX Healthcare Experience Conference

By Tye Cook, Senior Executive Director, Access Transformation, and Kjrk Reyerson, Senior Managing Consultant, Digital Transformation

We recently attended the 10th annual NGPX Healthcare Experience Conference in Palm Springs. The gathering was a testament to the dynamic shifts happening in healthcare, driven by the shared goal of delivering exceptional experiences for both patients and employees. Below are our key takeaways and insights from this enlightening event. 

The Central Theme: Unified Experience 

The conference underscored a compelling truth: The best patient experiences emerge from environments where employees thrive. A standout session included Press Ganey’s correlation analysis, which revealed a 1:1 correlation between top-quartile employee satisfaction and top-quartile patient satisfaction. This alignment is especially relevant to Tegria’s focus on harmonizing supply and demand within healthcare systems, an approach that has the power to optimize resources while improving outcomes. 

Interestingly, many organizations are now restructuring to combine employee and patient experience into a single function. This strategic shift reflects a growing understanding that these two facets of healthcare are intrinsically linked. 

Inpatient vs. Outpatient: A Broader Lens Needed 

Unsurprisingly, much of the conversation focused on inpatient experience, driven by HCAHPS scores and reimbursement incentives. For healthcare executives, this is familiar territory—these measures have been a priority for years. 

However, the discussion highlighted an urgent need to look beyond inpatient settings. The majority of patient-staff interactions occur in outpatient environments, yet these touchpoints often lack equivalent focus. Developing outpatient experience metrics could be the next frontier for driving holistic improvements across the continuum of care. 

The Role of Physician Leadership and Change Management 

Physicians emerged as key players in healthcare transformation. Change management was a recurring theme, and a memorable takeaway was this simple yet profound insight: If you want to start an argument with a doctor, bring data. If you want progress, start by discussing common pain points. 

Physician leadership is critical for change. Data alone won’t drive healthcare transformation; the conversation must begin with shared challenges and build toward collective solutions. When physicians take the lead, change efforts are far more likely to succeed. 

Cool Tech: Tools for Actionable Insights and Collaboration 

The conference showcased several innovative technologies that are reshaping the healthcare landscape: 

• PEP Health: A social media sentiment analysis tool offering real-time insights into the populations served by healthcare organizations. It complements traditional survey data, which often lacks the depth and immediacy needed for actionable insights. 

• Q-Rounds: A practical communication platform designed to enhance rounding by bringing patients, families, physicians, nurses, and consultants into a cohesive dialogue. Its CEO’s storytelling skills captivated attendees, underscoring the platform’s real-world value in solving common communication challenges. 

• Authenticx: A healthcare-specific AI analysis solution that provides real-time quality assurance for contact centers looking to improve the speed of recovery and outreach over traditional quality assurance systems using AI-enabled sentiment analysis.  

Making the Office of Patient Experience Obsolete 

One of the most ambitious aspirations discussed at the conference was the idea of making the Office of Patient Experience obsolete over the next decade. Not because the focus on experience would diminish, but because it would become so deeply embedded in the culture of healthcare organizations that a separate office would no longer be necessary. 

This vision reflects the ultimate goal: for patient and employee experience to be a natural, seamless part of every interaction, driven by a culture where everyone is empowered to contribute to these outcomes. 

Access as the Rallying Cry for Transformation 

While the conference offered a wealth of ideas, there was a recognized need for a unifying theme—a “rallying cry” to bring these concepts together into a cohesive strategy. At Tegria, we believe that Access can be that rallying cry. 

Access is foundational. Whether it’s ensuring timely appointments, equipping staff with the resources they need, or integrating technology to streamline workflows, access is the common denominator that drives both employee and patient satisfaction.

When access is optimized, everything else—quality, efficiency, and experience—falls into place. 

Trust And Collaboration  

For many healthcare providers, delivering exceptional experiences may feel like an overwhelming task that competes with operational demands or requires more institutional support. However, experience is foundational to trust, transparency, and collaboration. These elements often depend on formal and informal leaders who can champion experience initiatives and drive meaningful change.

While experience is a shared responsibility across the organization, having senior leadership represented in a customer or patient experience is essential. This role and the function required for success requires leadership to work across functional silos by engaging and incorporating data from supporting systems that actively link clinical and non-clinical data to ensure the proper level of personalization, quality, and outcomes.  

Opportunity With AI-Enabled Experience

The advancement of sentiment and frustration detection has the potential to automate and streamline the QA and experience function. While sentiment analysis is still being explored by a variety of enterprise-leading vendors, we believe the potential for detection, escalation, assignment, and proactive outreach has the potential to dramatically shift the ways that traditional survey mechanisms will be used in the future. 

Final Thoughts 

The NGPX conference reinforced that creating exceptional experiences in healthcare is not about siloed improvements but about embracing a systems approach. By combining employee and patient experience under one umbrella, engaging physicians in meaningful leadership roles, leveraging innovative technology, and rallying around the unifying theme of access, we can drive transformative change. 

Confirmed and validated throughout the NPGX conference was a theme of relationships, connectedness and desire to reach beyond functional silos.  Experience is a system of interactions that has the potential to grow, maintain, and reinforce the trust our patients and community members place in our care.  

As we look to the future, it’s clear that aligning the needs of patients, employees, and healthcare organizations is not just a strategy—it’s a necessity for building a more sustainable and patient-centered system. 

We left Palm Springs inspired by the progress being made and energized to continue the conversation. How can we, as a healthcare community, further bridge the gap between patient and employee experience? Let’s keep the dialogue going!