Today’s patients expect the same level of convenience, personalization, and responsiveness that they receive from industries like retail and hospitality. They research, compare, and share their healthcare experiences online, and will seek care elsewhere if their expectations aren’t met.
Paired with a growing body of research linking patient experience directly to clinical outcomes, revenue retention, and financial reimbursement, the value of this online data becomes undeniable.
Yet, healthcare has been slower to adapt than other consumer-driven industries—relying on surveys and quality metrics that reflect only a fraction of patient voices and deliver insights too little, too late. This means that by the time an issue surfaces, patients may already be shopping for alternative plans or switching providers.
The PEP Score changes that.
The PEP Score offers a faster, smarter approach to measuring patient experience. Powered by AI, it analyzes millions of patient feedback comments shared online daily across more than 350,000 U.S. healthcare locations, turning it into real-time, actionable insights.
That means:
- No waiting months for survey results
- No relying on a tiny fraction of patients
- No missing out on what people are saying online
“Having the ability to draw on feedback from more sources and go to places where patients were already sharing their experiences has given better opportunities to learn from a more diverse group of service users.”– Claire Cardu, Deputy Head of Midwifery and Transformation Lead Midwife for Women and Children, Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust
What is the PEP Score?
We developed the PEP Score as a standardized, real-time experience metric designed to keep pace with the changing healthcare landscape.
Based on real-world patient feedback from over 35 million online reviews or mentions of care across social media, review platforms, electronic medical records, and other digital sources, it provides a complete, up-to-the-day view of patient experiences across health systems, facilities, and service lines.
The PEP Score tracks every step of the patient journey—from appointment scheduling to post-care follow-ups—categorizing feedback within seven core care domains and turning it into insights that organizations can understand and act on fast.
These insights help hospitals and health plans to recognize and reward what’s working well from a patient’s perspective, while also identifying pain points and areas for improvement—such as long wait times, poor communication, or confusing billing—before they drive patients away.
The PEP Score’s Seven Core Care Domains:
- Effective Treatment: Quality of medical care and patient safety
- Fast Access: Timeliness of appointments and healthcare services
- Emotional Support: Compassionate care that addresses patients’ emotional needs
- Communication & Involvement: Clarity in provider-patient interactions and shared decision-making
- Attention to Physical & Environmental Needs: Cleanliness, privacy, and comfort in healthcare facilities
- Continuity of Care: Coordination of care across multiple providers and levels of care
- Billing & Administration: Transparency, accuracy, and professionalism in financial interactions
The PEP Score uses NLP and machine learning to turn unstructured patient feedback into actionable insights within seven core care domains.
“The platform not only helps pinpoint negative feedback or address key areas for improvement, it is also beneficial in highlighting positive feedback that motivates teams too. It is important for midwives to see how they are valued, so when they are mentioned on social media or online forums, it is used in their personal validations that support their development and help with team morale.” – Clare Cardu, Deputy Head of Midwifery and Transformation Lead Midwife for Women and Children at Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust
How AI Powers the PEP Score
Our AI scans millions of real patient reviews and instantly figures out what’s working and what needs attention. Additionally, it spots trends before they become problems, so hospitals can fix issues fast.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) reads patient comments the way humans would but at superhuman speed, identifying themes, sentiment, and patterns with over 95% accuracy, trained by expert language analysts and data scientists
- Machine Learning models continuously refine insights and identify trends, learning what good and bad experiences look like over time and predicting shifts in satisfaction before they escalate.
- Real-time analysis provides daily insights, eliminating months-long waits for survey and outcomes data, so that hospitals and payers see trends and shifts in sentiment as they happen.
NLP identifies themes, sentiment, and patterns in patient feedback in real time with over 95% accuracy.
Why We Created the PEP Score
Despite being the industry standard, traditional patient satisfaction surveys like HCAHPS come with major limitations:
- Long reporting delays: HCAHPS data is released at least 9 months (and in some cases, up to two years) after patient interactions, making timely improvements difficult
- Low response rates: Surveys capture only a fraction of patient experiences
- Limited scope: HCAHPS surveys ask just 18 structured questions, overlooking critical aspects of patient care
- Survey fatigue: The repetitive and rigid formats of surveys often lead patients to ignore them, reducing meaningful participation
How the PEP Score Solves These Challenges
By analyzing unsolicited patient feedback in real time, the PEP Score offers a broad, inclusive, and timely view of patient experience.
It reduces the overreliance on surveys and outdated metrics, empowering healthcare organizations to make smarter, faster, data-driven decisions that enhance quality, reduce costs, and improve clinical and financial outcomes.
With a proven correlation to future HCAHPS scores, the PEP Score acts as an early warning system, allowing hospitals to proactively improve before regulatory reports are released.
“We see PEP data as a valuable approach to PX metrics within value-based agreements because of the alignment to HCAHPS survey themes, domains, and questions.” – Feedback from a major U.S. health plan
Organizations using the PEP Score have seen 30% year-over-year improvements in patient experience by making informed, cost-effective decisions that drive measurable change.
Furthermore, our research shows that hospitals that improve their PEP Score by 1 point save $12.4 million on average in revenue leakage by retaining patients.
“PEP Score removes over-survey risk in the market and among our patients, and the insights generally align to what we believe to be true at our health system through our internal PX metrics.” – Feedback from a large U.S. health system
The Need for a Universal, Validated Metric
As healthcare shifts toward value-based care, with over $8 billion in financial reimbursements tied to patient experience, organizations need a consistent and validated way to measure satisfaction.
Many still rely on outdated data, missing what patients are actually saying. The PEP Score transforms raw patient feedback into clear, actionable insights that healthcare leaders can use immediately.
How the PEP Score Helps
- Predicts healthcare outcomes: Enables hospitals to adjust strategies proactively
- Identifies health equity gaps: Highlights disparities in care when combined with SDoH and other data
- Provides real-time insights: Flags issues like appointment availability or communication breakdowns before they escalate and impact outcomes
- Standardizes patient experience measurement: Moves beyond rankings to provide clear, data-backed comparisons rooted in actual patient feedback
By providing timely, data-driven insights, the PEP Score helps every stakeholder in the healthcare ecosystem.
Providers gain clear priorities for quality improvement; payers and insurers can shape more equitable reimbursement models; and patients benefit from responsive, targeted enhancements to their care experience.
Looking Ahead
The future of patient experience measurement lies in capturing unsolicited patient voices through AI, rather than relying on rigid surveys and outdated metrics.
Many healthcare leaders are concerned that traditional benchmarks may not fully capture what matters most to patients. The risk is that these tools are outdated and disconnected from the real needs of patients.
As Dr. Julie Kennedy Oehlert, Chief Experience Officer at ECU Health, states:
“Quality is what the patient says it is.”
Healthcare organizations that fail to effectively listen to their patients risk losing them. The PEP Score bridges the gap between patient perceptions, clinical care, and financial performance, ensuring that patient voices are not only heard but also acted upon swiftly and effectively.
Organizations using the PEP Score are already reporting measurable improvements in care quality, resource optimization, and financial performance.
Looking forward, healthcare organizations that embrace the PEP Score will be better equipped to meet the current and future needs of their patients and stay ahead of the curve in a competitive healthcare landscape. The time to embrace this change is now.
Want to learn more or see how it fits your current feedback system?
Schedule a demo or contact our team to explore how the PEP Score can elevate your patient experience strategies.
Data Privacy & Compliance
We take strict measures to ensure all patient feedback data complies with HIPAA, GDPR, and other privacy regulations. Our systems undergo continuous monitoring and security audits to uphold best-in-class data protection. We are ISO 27001 accredited, maintaining the highest standards of privacy, security, and compliance. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and we do not store any personally identifiable information about patients—any identifying details are anonymized or de-identified.
