Bottom Line up Front (BLUF): EMS has always measured what it does. Increasingly, it must also measure how patients experience what it does. Clinical outcomes, response times and protocol compliance remain essential, but they tell only part of the story. Patient experience provides EMS leaders with actionable intelligence to improve care, strengthen employee engagement, build community trust and demonstrate the value of their service to patients, healthcare partners and policymakers.
Asking the right questions
One of the webinar’s most practical lessons borrowed from Simon Sinek’s well-known Golden Circle model. Many organizations begin by asking what survey platform they should use or how they should distribute surveys. David Harrawood argued they are asking the wrong questions. Agencies should first ask why they are measuring patient experience. Without a clearly defined purpose, surveys become little more than an accreditation requirement. Starting with the “why” ensures the information collected will drive meaningful improvement rather than simply producing another performance report.
The panel identified five reasons every EMS agency should measure patient experience.
- First, agencies gain an objective understanding of what matters most to patients and how those priorities differ across age, gender, race, medical condition and neighborhood.
- Second, they can demonstrate with data that they are meeting expectations across all demographic groups.
- Third, patient feedback becomes one of the most powerful employee recognition tools available, celebrating clinicians who consistently provide exceptional care.
- Fourth, agencies can identify performance gaps before they become organizational problems.
- Finally, patient experience data provides compelling evidence for governing boards, healthcare partners and elected officials by demonstrating the value EMS delivers beyond traditional operational metrics.
What do patients actually value?
Perhaps the most interesting discussion centered on a simple question: What do patients actually value? Drawing on more than 200,000 telephone interviews conducted over the past 25 years, Harrawood explained that patients consistently rank the quality of care, compassion, professionalism and communication among the most important aspects of their experience. Richmond Ambulance Authority’s own data echoed those findings, with patients placing “care provided,” “concern and caring,” and “professionalism” ahead of response times. While arriving quickly remains important, patients remember far more than the number of minutes it took an ambulance to reach them. They remember whether someone listened, explained what was happening, treated them with dignity and inspired confidence during one of the most stressful moments of their lives.
The webinar also challenged agencies to think carefully about how they collect patient feedback. Paper surveys are inexpensive and easily customized, but generally produce low response rates and slow returns. Text-message surveys offer convenience and automation, yet they often achieve lower participation rates and may not reach every patient population equally. Telephone interviews require more investment, but they consistently generate richer conversations, higher response rates and more representative feedback. The panel’s message was clear: the survey method should support the agency’s purpose, not simply reflect the lowest-cost option.
Who, what, where, when
Collecting feedback, however, is only the first step. The real value comes from analyzing the results. Rather than reporting a single satisfaction score, the presenters encouraged agencies to examine the four W’s:
- Who was the patient?
- What was the clinical condition or response type?
- Where did the encounter occur?
- When did it happen?
Segmenting results in this way allows leaders to identify patterns that would otherwise remain hidden. Differences by shift, station, ZIP code, patient demographics or call type become opportunities for targeted coaching, education and system improvement, rather than anecdotal observations.
The discussion also highlighted the importance of measuring more than overall satisfaction. Satisfaction tells an agency whether it has met expectations. Patients who report being very satisfied indicate that the organization exceeded expectations through exceptional communication, professionalism and compassion. Beyond that is loyalty, often measured through a Net Promoter Score, which identifies patients who become advocates for their EMS system.
Those individuals tell family members, friends, community leaders and elected officials about the care they received, creating a level of public trust that operational statistics alone can never achieve.
We are calling to see how you are feeling
Richmond Ambulance Authority provided a practical example of what this looks like in practice. Since introducing its patient experience program in 2016, RAA has conducted nearly 20,000 structured telephone interviews with patients. The conversations begin simply, not with a survey, but with genuine concern: “We recently transported you to the hospital. We’re calling to see how you’re feeling.”
Only after establishing that connection do callers ask six brief questions about the patient’s experience. The results have been impressive. Overall patient satisfaction increased to 99%, while the proportion of patients reporting they were “very satisfied” increased by nearly 15%.
More importantly, RAA uses those findings to recognize outstanding clinicians, identify opportunities for improvement, shape organizational strategy and communicate its value to stakeholders.
Throughout the webinar, the presenters returned to a consistent theme: patient experience is not a public relations exercise. It is a quality improvement tool. Understanding what patients value allows agencies to improve communication, identify disparities, strengthen organizational culture and ensure that every patient, not just most patients, receives the standard of care the profession strives to deliver.
Measuring the human side of care
EMS has always excelled at measuring operational performance. The next step is measuring the human side of care with the same discipline and purpose. Clinical excellence will always remain the foundation of EMS, but clinical excellence combined with compassion, communication and professionalism is what patients remember. As healthcare continues its shift toward patient-centered care, measuring that experience is no longer optional; it is becoming an essential component of defining and delivering quality EMS.
For decades, EMS has measured success through operational and clinical metrics. Response times, cardiac arrest survival, protocol compliance and clinical outcomes have become the accepted benchmarks by which agencies judge performance. Those measures remain fundamental, but they tell only part of the story.
Every patient also experiences something far less tangible, the human side of EMS. They remember whether they were listened to, whether procedures were explained, whether clinicians were compassionate and professional, and whether they inspired confidence during what was often one of the most stressful days of a patient’s life.
