Tuesday, August 11, 2026
FeedbackNow today announced the release of the Q2 2026 FeedbackNow Hospital Index, the second edition of its quarterly benchmarking report examining patient experience performance across key hospital environments.
And this quarter, the headline is encouraging: patient satisfaction is moving in the right direction.
But beneath that improvement, the Q2 data reveals a more complicated picture.
Some parts of the hospital experience are performing exceptionally well. Others continue to create significant friction. Performance is shifting across hospital sizes and regions, and the gap between the strongest and weakest patient touchpoints raises an increasingly important question for healthcare leaders:
Is improving average satisfaction enough if patients are still experiencing very different levels of service across the same care journey?
That question sits at the center of the Q2 2026 Hospital Index. Overall satisfaction improved quarter over quarter, including even stronger gains among hospitals represented in both Q1 and Q2. But those gains were not distributed evenly across the patient journey.
What Changed in Q2?
With a second quarter of data, the Hospital Index can now begin to show not simply where patient experience stands, but where it is moving.
The Q2 findings point to several developments worth watching:
- Emergency Departments are improving — but remain under significant pressure.
- Some of the most human-centered care environments continue to outperform more transactional parts of the patient journey.
- Larger hospital systems are making gains, while the challenges associated with scale remain visible.
- Regional performance is beginning to diverge.
- Several less obvious operational touchpoints are emerging as significant sources of patient experience friction.
Perhaps most importantly, the data suggests that consistency may be becoming as important as overall satisfaction.
Patients don't experience a hospital as a collection of independent departments. They experience one journey — from arrival and waiting to clinical care, procedures, support services, and discharge. A strong experience at one stage can still be undermined by friction somewhere else.
A Benchmark That Is Beginning to Tell a Bigger Story
The Q2 Index draws on more than 150,000 patient responses, providing an expanding view of patient experience across participating hospital environments.
For healthcare leaders responsible for patient experience, operations, EVS, nursing, facilities, and clinical support, the latest Index provides a way to look beyond organization-wide averages and explore where the patient journey is strengthening — and where operational friction may still be hiding.
The full report explores:
- Which hospital environments improved most from Q1
- Where patient satisfaction remains under the greatest pressure
- How performance is changing by hospital size
- Emerging differences across geographic regions
- Which operational touchpoints may deserve more attention
- What the quarter-over-quarter data suggests about the growing importance of consistency and responsiveness
The Q2 findings reinforce a central theme: measurement alone doesn't improve patient experience. What matters is how quickly organizations can identify friction and turn that insight into action.
The FeedbackNow Hospital Index will continue to be published quarterly as the benchmark expands, providing healthcare organizations with an evolving view of patient experience performance and operational trends.
Download the Q2 2026 FeedbackNow Hospital Index to explore the complete findings, benchmarks, and quarter-over-quarter trends.
About FeedbackNow
FeedbackNow helps organizations improve operational performance and customer experience through real-time feedback and insight. In today’s environment, customers, patients, and loyalty are won — or lost — in real time.
FeedbackNow enables healthcare organizations, airports, retailers, transportation providers, and other high-traffic environments to capture live feedback, identify operational friction quickly, and empower frontline teams to respond faster. By turning real-time insight into immediate action, FeedbackNow helps organizations improve satisfaction, strengthen loyalty, and create more connected experiences.
Contact us to learn more about how FeedbackNow can help improve your customer experience and operations!
