Current Employee Experience Trends in Health Care
Recent data from Press Ganey, reflecting input from over 1.4 million health care employees, reveals that after an initial post-pandemic rebound, employee engagement declined slightly in 2024 — a decrease of 0.02 on a 5-point scale. This downward trend cut across nearly all roles. Most notably, the steepest declines were observed among physicians and advanced practice providers, with scores falling by 0.06 and 0.08, respectively.
So, what’s driving this downturn after last year’s positive momentum?
To explore this question, the American Hospital Association (AHA) and Press Ganey partnered with leaders from seven diverse health care systems — including chief human resource officers, chief nursing officers and chief medical officers — to gain insight into their employee and physician experience strategies. Our aim was to better understand the challenges they are facing today and the tactics they’re using to overcome them.
Challenges to driving employee and physician experience
From a series of group discussions and workshops with the group of executives, four key challenges emerged in advancing employee and physician experience.
- Competing priorities. Health care organizations face the constant challenge of balancing multiple critical domains of performance — patient experience, employee experience, physician experience, safety and quality. Each of these areas is vital and deserves careful attention and planning. Yet, addressing them in isolation can dilute impact. The most successful organizations integrate these priorities into a unified, strategic approach.
- Prioritizing and managing change. Health care is steeped in deep-rooted traditions. But a mindset of "we've always done it this way" creates barriers to progress. Resistance to adopting new processes, technologies or strategies is common but will prevent an organization from keeping up with key advancements. Overcoming this inertia requires strong leadership, clear communication and a sound case for how change benefits both employees and patients.
- Psychological safety. Creating an environment where team members feel safe to share feedback is essential. Psychological safety must be integrated into organizational values and reinforced at every opportunity; respect should be akin to hand hygiene. When individuals believe their voices are heard and that their input leads to meaningful change, trust deepens, engagement rises and innovation thrives.
- Making the case for employee and physician experience. Perhaps the most persistent challenge is securing full senior management buy-in for making the investment in workforce experience. Building the case for investment in the current resource-constrained environment starts with data showing how employee and physician experience is directly linked to patient and financial outcomes. It also calls for compelling and relatable real-world examples. Seeing how other organizations reap benefits from investing in the caregiver experience demonstrates what’s possible and creates a compelling call to action.
Chris DeRienzo, M.D., is the AHA’s senior vice president and chief physician executive, and president of AHA’s Health Research and Educational Trust. Nell Buhlman is chief administrative officer and head of strategy at Press Ganey.
Upcoming Event: The AHA and Press Ganey at the 2025 AHA Leadership Summit in Nashville, Tenn., will host a pre-summit workshop, The Path to Sustained Excellence in Engagement, on Sunday, July 20, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. This interactive workshop will explore how employee engagement drives safety, quality and the patient experience — and how aligning these efforts leads to meaningful, sustained improvement. Learn how top-performing organizations gather feedback, integrate data and take targeted action. Attendees will also have the opportunity to share challenges, successes and strategies for advancing performance. Registration is open.