6 Examples of Excellent Customer Service in Healthcare

Patients today don’t just evaluate their healthcare by whether or not they got better. That’s obviously essential, but patients evaluate their healthcare experiences the same way they evaluate every other service experience in their lives. Was it easy to navigate? Did staff and providers communicate clearly? Did they feel respected? Did someone follow up?

For many healthcare organizations, this feels like a big challenge. You can have the best doctors and research in the world, but that alone isn’t enough to maintain a strong reputation. For leaders whose teams influence the patient experience — whether in operations, nursing, administration, or patient services — it means figuring out what excellent customer service in healthcare looks like across the many different touchpoints in the patient journey.

But you don’t have to figure it out from scratch. Health systems and hospitals across the world have invested seriously in patient experience, and their results offer real-world lessons. Below are six standout examples, including lessons you can apply at your own organization to drive better patient experiences. 

1. Mayo Clinic makes “I don’t know who to call” a non-issue

One consistent challenge patients face across many healthcare systems isn’t about clinical quality; it’s about fragmentation. Patients with complex conditions often find themselves as the only thread connecting their cardiologist, their internist, their physical therapist, and their surgeon. 

No one is talking to anyone else, and the patient is left to manage the coordination and advocate for themself.

Mayo Clinic built its entire model of care around solving this problem. Every patient is assigned a coordinating physician who takes personal responsibility for directing care over time. Specialists across departments collaborate — often within a single visit — to develop a unified treatment plan. It’s an integrated approach, and it has been the foundation of Mayo’s model for over a century.

I experienced the impact of this personally last year when my father was suffering from consistent GI issues, significant weight loss, and various other symptoms. He first went to his local doctor, then he tried navigating several local Chicago hospital healthcare systems. But because he didn’t have a diagnosis, he didn’t know who to call or how to get the help he needed. 

Then, because my sister lives near Mayo, he picked up the phone and called them. A few minutes later, he had an appointment scheduled to see a team of specialists who would evaluate his health, working together to create a customized treatment plan. It was a perfect example of Mayo’s patient-centered care approach in action.

How to reduce care coordination friction at your organization

• Map your typical patient journey and identify every “who do I call now?” moment. These are the friction points most worth addressing.

• Consider assigning a care coordinator for patients with complex or chronic conditions. Even part-time coordination is better than none.

• Use shared internal notes so no patient has to re-explain their history at every appointment. EHR discipline pays real dividends in patient trust.

• Even informal “this is your go-to person” communication during patient intake can replicate the coordinator effect for lower-complexity patients.

2. Geisinger offers dissatisfied patients their money back (no questions asked)

Over ten years ago, Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania launched an unprecedented program: If a patient felt they didn’t receive kind and compassionate care, they could request a refund of their copayment (up to $2,000) through an app. 

No dispute process. No negotiation. No questions asked.

The program was called ProvenExperience, and in an interview with Clinician, Geisinger’s then-CEO David Feinberg shared how the idea was received by his peers:

Geisinger’s team doubled down on compassion and their reputation, building ProvenExperience on a simple idea: If a patient paid for care and felt the service failed them, returning their money was the right thing to do — just like any other service business would. 

“Ultimately, [patients] just want to be acknowledged and to spare other families any pain they might have experienced,” explained Feinberg. Was there some risk involved? Yes. But Feinberg and his team knew it would lead to a better patient experience.

So, what happened? 

It was the opposite of what most probably expected: Patients rarely abused the program. Refund payouts have declined dramatically over time, from $320,141 in FY2016 to approximately $84,000 in 2020 and $40,000 in 2021 — even as patient satisfaction scores dropped during COVID.

The biggest impact of this has been the effect on Geisinger’s culture. It’s given rise to a culture of accountability, including empowering Geisinger’s team to proactively issue the majority of refunds.

Like Ritz-Carlton empowering employees to spend up to $2,000 to improve guest experiences, Geisinger’s program has sent a clear signal that what matters is patient experience. In addition to issuing refunds, any experience issue a patient flags is paired with an action plan to prevent the same situation from occurring with future patients. 

“Part of learning is not just knowing what went wrong for a particular patient or family, but then finding ways to fix it,” Dr. Burke said. “There [always has to be] an action plan associated with failure. That benefits the system and also benefits the patients, because then we’re continually improving.”

How to create a culture of accountability around patient experience

• You don’t have to offer cash refunds to apply Geisinger’s underlying principle: Make it easy for patients to tell you when something went wrong, and then respond meaningfully.

• Audit your current feedback channels. Are patient complaints actually reaching someone with the power to fix them, or are they disappearing into a form? What do you do with that feedback? 

• Train staff to proactively acknowledge service failures, catching issues during the visit rather than waiting for a complaint. Proactive support creates a better, more memorable experience for patients.

3. Stamford Health borrows from hospitality to make patients feel human

Patients don’t just want competent care; they want to feel seen. Stamford Health in Connecticut has made this concrete by drawing explicit inspiration from the hospitality industry.

In a 2024 blog post, CEO Kathleen Silard describes their approach: “We take cues from top-tier restaurants by creating tailored in-patient meals for cultural and religious celebrations, such as Rosh Hashanah and Chinese New Year.” Holiday caroling, information about religious observances broadcast on bedside TVs, and lobby performances from a local professional orchestra are part of the deliberate effort to make patients feel respected as individuals rather than managed as cases.

Stamford Health is one of only 90 health systems worldwide to earn Planetree Gold Certification for excellence in person-centered care. This certification is meaningful because it’s external recognition that they’ve created an organization-wide culture that supports partnering with patients and their families to improve health and well-being holistically.

This focus on great care makes a huge difference in the patient experience, and it requires a long-term commitment to create a culture that supports it.

How to bring a hospitality mindset to your team

• Train front-line staff how to recognize cues that signal a patient is stressed, confused, or uncomfortable and respond proactively. 

• Review your organization’s physical environment. Do your waiting rooms, lighting, and signage feel welcoming or institutional? How can you make them more calm or soothing?

• Lean into moments of connection. When a patient is interacting with a member of your staff, it’s your best opportunity to build trust and create a positive experience. This can be as simple as giving a patient your full attention, asking questions about a patient’s preferences (and taking notes in your EMR system), or adjusting your treatment plan based on a person’s cultural identity. 

4. St. Bernard Hospital went from “F” to “A” on $100,000 a year

In Spring 2021, St. Bernard Hospital — a 174-bed independent safety-net hospital on Chicago’s South Side — received the only “F” Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade in the state of Illinois. Rather than launching an expensive culture transformation, they made targeted, practical fixes.

Michael Richardson, hired as Chief Quality & Patient Safety Officer in September 2021, convened a multidisciplinary team of nurses, pharmacists, and physicians to identify the root causes. What they found was almost embarrassingly simple: Wi-Fi dead spots and broken barcode scanners were preventing nurses from scanning patient wristbands and medications at the bedside. 

A basic infrastructure failure was masquerading as a compliance problem.

They fixed the Wi-Fi. They replaced the scanning equipment. They also implemented electronic hand hygiene monitoring: BioVigil badges that turn green after handwashing and alert staff who enter a patient room without washing. Barcode medication administration compliance jumped from roughly 70% to 95–98%. Hand hygiene compliance reached approximately 90%. 

By 2023, St. Bernard had earned an “A” from Leapfrog. The organization’s VP called the turnaround “extremely rare.” The total annual cost of all quality improvement initiatives? Approximately $100,000. 

As St. Bernard’s CFO noted, “The costs of providing poor quality care far outweigh the costs of safety initiatives.”

How to identify patient experience improvement opportunities at your organization

• Before assuming your patient experience problems require a culture overhaul, audit your core infrastructure. Are there broken tools, system failures, or workflow gaps that front-line staff work around every day?

• Ask your nurses and pharmacists what slows them down. In St. Bernard’s case, the answer was already known — it just hadn’t been fixed.

• Start with the highest-risk, most measurable gaps first. Medication scanning and hand hygiene are both safety-critical and trackable.

5. WellSpan Health’s AI outreach agent effectively engages traditionally underserved patient populations

WellSpan Health, a health system in central Pennsylvania, deployed an AI voice agent named “Ana” to reach patients eligible for colorectal cancer screening — specifically patients without active online health portal accounts, who are typically unreachable through conventional digital outreach.

Ana makes phone calls in English and Spanish, explains the importance of screening, answers patient questions in natural conversation, and arranges to mail at-home FIT (colorectal screening) test kits. The system was designed to engage patients the health system couldn’t otherwise reach.

In an analysis of 1,878 outreach calls from September 2024, the results were significant: 15% of Spanish-speaking patients agreed to screening, compared with 6% of English-speaking patients. That’s a 2.6x higher opt-in rate from a population that’s historically underserved by healthcare outreach.

Navigating the healthcare system when you don’t speak the primary language can be brutally difficult. Patients may not know the right terms to express their symptoms effectively. Feelings of embarrassment and frustration quickly surface, which is why it’s so easy for patients like this to be underserved or receive inadequate treatment. 

WellSpan Health’s AI outreach is a great example of leveraging technology to overcome these barriers and increase the odds of better outcomes for patients. 

How to leverage AI and technology across your patient journey: 

• Identify patient populations your current outreach methods don’t reach effectively. Portal non-users, non-English speakers, and patients without reliable email access are common gaps.

• AI-assisted outreach doesn’t require a large health system budget to implement. Several vendors offer per-call pricing models accessible to mid-size practices.

• Run small experiments to test AI or other new technologies. While each patient segment may respond differently, the only way to learn and see the outcomes is to try. 

6. Parkview Health listens to 277,000 patients a year — and acts on what they hear

Parkview Health, a regional health system based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, was ranked the number one medium-sized health system nationally for patient experience by NRC Health in both 2023 and 2024. In 2025, they received NRC Health’s Excellence in Experience Management Award — a recognition given to just one organization per year.

The foundation of their approach is scale and discipline in listening. Parkview collects more than 277,000 patient surveys annually and uses the results to drive changes and improvements. 

In addition to listening to patients, Parkview also focuses on what their employees need. The system has been named a top-five Most Loved Workplace in America, highlighting the connection between employee engagement and patient experience. Employee-focused initiatives have included things like quarterly lifestyle benefit stipends, offering paid volunteer hours each year, tuition support for furthering education, and partnering with local childcare providers to provide backup childcare for working parents.

I’ve often heard it said that happy employees lead to happy customers, and it seems the same connection may exist in healthcare. Given the physical and emotional burdens that healthcare employees carry with their patients, I don’t think anyone should be surprised at that.

How to build a listening culture at your organization

• Volume matters: 277,000 surveys don't happen by accident. If your current feedback collection is too thin to surface patterns, increase the touchpoints and channels to collect more feedback.

• Patient feedback is only valuable if it drives action. Build a process for routing survey insights to the people who can act on them, with clear ownership and timelines.

• Employee engagement and patient experience are correlated. If your patient satisfaction scores are low, analyze your employee satisfaction data alongside it. 

Great patient experiences require great focus

Great customer service in healthcare looks different from a SaaS company or marketing agency, but many of the same best practices and core ideas remain the same. From reducing friction in the patient experience to empowering employees and thoughtfully implementing technology, every healthcare practitioner and organization has a myriad of opportunities to improve the patient experience and deliver better outcomes. 

The examples above span different budgets, specialties, and organizational sizes. What they have in common is their disposition — they’ve all made a choice to prioritize creating great patient experiences. Someone chose to ask the right questions, find the specific gaps, and make concrete changes to drive improvements. 

If you’re a healthcare professional or the leader of a patient experience department, you can do the same thing. Pick one touchpoint in your organization where the experience falls short — discharge, waiting room communication, language access, post-visit follow-up — and make it meaningfully better. 

That’s how every example on this list began, and it can transform your organization over time too.