Based on a PracticeCare® podcast conversation, Barbara Khozam on Building a Great Patient Experience, with Barbara Khozam, founder of Barbara Khozam Speaking and Consulting and a Certified Patient Experience Professional.
Why isn’t great clinical care enough to keep patients choosing your practice?
Patients assume clinical competence before they ever walk in. At that point it is not yet a differentiator. In one survey Barbara Khozam cites, when patients rated what mattered most in a quality doctor visit, the doctor’s medical knowledge and decision-making came in seventh, not first, second, or third.
What ranked higher: feeling respected, feeling listened to, and being acknowledged the moment they walked in. Patients assume competence the same way airline passengers assume the pilot is qualified. Nobody boards a flight and asks to see the pilot’s license. Once competence is assumed, something else becomes the deciding factor.
What are the early warning signs a practice has a patient experience problem?
Two patterns show up constantly. Firest, patients come in once and quietly disappear without ever complaining. Second, front desk staff, especially newer hires, seem impossible to motivate no matter what’s tried.
Both usually get blamed on the wrong thing. Owners tend to fault the front desk for problems that actually start with leadership. If the doctor or owner doesn’t greet staff by name or recognize them, that gap travels straight through to how patients get treated.
How much does staff culture actually affect patient experience?
Directly. Practices with strong patient experience treat their team well: regular huddles, consistent recognition, and clear customer service protocols staff can be held accountable to.
Employees who feel cared for extend that same care to patients. It shows up in small, consistent behaviors, because those behaviors get reinforced rather than left to chance.
Does tracking metrics like patient volume or “production” undermine patient experience?
It can, if that’s the only thing being measured. Framing patients as a number to move through quickly tells staff that speed matters more than the person in front of them, and patients notice being rushed even when nobody says it out loud.
The counterexample: some practices run tight 15-minute visits and patients love them anyway, because each visit has one clear focus and the doctor is warm and fully present for those 15 minutes. Being efficient and feeling rushed aren’t the same thing.
Where should a practice owner start checking for a problem?
Two places. First, the in-person greeting: when a patient walks in, are they acknowledged right away, or left standing there? Barbara describes visiting an office with mirrored doors covered in “do not knock” signs — she stood there five minutes with no idea whether anyone even knew she’d arrived.
Second, feedback. If a practice isn’t hearing consistent complaints about anything — wait times, hold times, check-in — that’s not actually a good sign. It usually means patients don’t care enough to say anything, which is worse than getting critical feedback.
Why do online reviews matter so much for patient experience specifically?
Even a strong personal referral doesn’t end the search. Roughly 78% of patients still go online to validate a referral before booking, and a page with only eight reviews from 2014 raises real doubt about whether a practice is still active.
Patterns in reviews double as a free diagnostic. When several reviews mention the same friction point, that’s a specific, fixable problem showing up in public, which is exactly the kind of signal worth acting on.
What’s one low-cost place a practice owner can start tomorrow?
The in-person greeting costs nothing to fix. Neither does using a patient’s name, acknowledging them the moment they walk in, or making sure the phone actually gets answered.
On the leadership side, start by greeting your own staff by name every day. Barbara built a one-page, 38-item Customer Service Checklist for Leaders. It covers things like whether the practice has a mission statement and documented service protocols, specifically to help owners figure out where to look first.
A final note
Patients assume you’re good at medicine. You’re already supposed to be good at medicine. What actually earns loyalty and referrals happens in the seconds and minutes around the clinical care — the greeting, the phone call, the way staff are treated when no patient is watching. None of it requires a bigger budget than the practice down the street. It requires deciding it matters and doing it consistently, which is exactly why so few practices actually do it.
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