It’s Time for Healthcare to Evolve from Patient Experience to Health Experience

For decades, healthcare leaders have used patient experience as a yardstick of progress. By focusing on it, they improved communication at the bedside, reduced friction in treatment, and elevated the voices of those receiving care.

Yet healthcare organizations have most often defined and measured patient experience within the setting itself—through encounters, satisfaction surveys, and episodic measures of care.

Health experience expands the lens. It carries forward the strengths of patient experience but situates them in a broader, continuous view—connecting physical and mental health, prevention and treatment, data and human support. It reflects the truth that people live with health every day, not just in moments of illness. And it sets a higher standard for what healthcare can and should deliver.

Otsuka Precision Health (OPH) is helping lead this evolution—shifting the conversation from narrow measures of patient experience to a more holistic vision of health experience.

Toward Redefining the Standard of Care

Recent evidence underscores why this shift matters. A 2024 systematic review examined 19 studies on patient-reported continuity of care and its association with health outcomes:

• The studies explored links between continuity and outcomes such as quality of life, self-reported health, hospitalizations or emergency visits, function and well-being, mortality, and physiological measures.
  
• The review found that a majority of studies reported a positive association between higher continuity and at least one health outcome.
  
• In sensitivity analyses focusing on larger studies, the association with reduced emergency department use and re-admissions appeared especially consistent.

These findings reinforce that continuity—the connective tissue of a person’s journey through care—is essential to moving beyond episodic patient experience toward a more holistic health experience.

The Evolution: Patient Support → Patient Experience → Health Experience

The healthcare industry has long understood the importance of patient support and patient experience. But what began as support, and then evolved into patient experience, is now expanding further. The shift from patient experience toward health experience is more than an incremental change—it’s a redefinition of what care must encompass.

• Patient support: Tactical and treatment-specific, focused on practical, logistical, and financial help—like nurse navigators, co-pay programs, or scheduling—that remove immediate barriers to care.
  
• Patient experience: Centered on satisfaction, convenience, and improving bedside manner and communication with disease management. But it starts only when someone seeks care and ends when they leave—rarely addressing mental health, social context, or daily choices that sustain well-being.
  
• Health experience: Health experience takes the strengths of patient experience and extends them into a broader, more person-centered model. It looks at the full arc of a person’s well-being—before, during, and long after a visit. It’s holistic, personalized, and deeply human, pairing data-driven insights with real human connection. It brings mental and physical health together, makes space for prevention and early action, and fits naturally into real life.

Each stage expands the view—from logistics to service quality to the individual's full lived context. When fully matured, the health experience will be about connection, agency, and continuous support that fits into real life. 

Reshaping the Experience

At OPH, we translate this philosophy into practice. Our solutions are designed to anticipate needs before they become crises, support people continuously, and integrate seamlessly into daily life. 

By combining evidence-based digital tools with human connection, we aim to make health experience measurable, predictive, and actionable.

These are the questions we obsess over:

• What if healthcare met people where they are—before, during, and after treatment?
• What if digital tools didn’t replace human connection but amplified it?
• What if the measure of success wasn’t just symptom relief, but restoring engagement and well-being?

We don’t claim to have solved the full continuum yet, but we do have the mindset, motivation, and commitment to work toward it.

Take Rejoyn®, an FDA-authorized prescription digital therapeutic for people living with depression. Validated through a rigorous clinical trial, it delivers therapeutic exercises via a mobile app, giving people skills they can use every day as an adjunct to their antidepressant medication. Because it can be accessed anytime and anywhere once prescribed, it complements clinical care by offering continuous engagement and teaching self-management strategies. An optional nurse support line helps patients get started, providing light-touch guidance that reinforces provider care without replacing it.

Another example is Elevmi™, which supports caregivers of loved ones with Alzheimer’s. Caregivers often begin by seeking practical information about the disease or daily responsibilities, but over time more than half share personal challenges—family dynamics, financial pressures, even burnout. Many express gratitude simply for being heard. Elevmi offers resources, reassurance, and empathetic AI dialogue trained on real caregiver insights, helping caregivers feel less alone, more confident, and better prepared for conversations with healthcare providers.

OPH is also extending this imperative into women’s health through Mindful Mamas, a digital platform built by mothers, for mothers, to support mental and emotional well-being across every stage of motherhood. It offers tools—including guided meditations, mood tracking, and sleep support—to help mothers feel seen, understood, and less alone. With over 2,000 five-star ratings from users, Mindful Mamas empowers women to build resilience and self-compassion throughout their motherhood journey.

The Future is Health Experience

The evolution from patient support to patient experience to health experience isn’t just a framework—it’s the future standard of care. 

At OPH, we believe health experience should be as measurable as any clinical outcome and as actionable as any treatment plan. By expanding the lens to include the whole arc of well-being, we can create a system that is more humane, more predictive, and ultimately more effective.

Reach out to learn how we can build a more human health experience together, and be sure to follow us on LinkedIn for more perspectives on this evolution. 

INDICATION: Rejoyn is a prescription digital therapeutic for the treatment of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) symptoms as an adjunct to clinician-managed outpatient care for adult patients with MDD age 22 years and older who are on antidepressant  medication. It is intended to reduce MDD symptoms.     

SAFETY INFORMATION: Rejoyn is not intended to be used as a standalone therapy or a substitute for medication. Patients should continue their current treatment as directed.   

See Clinician Brief Summary at rejoynhcp.com/CBS 

References:

1. Evans R., et al. (2025). Strengthening patient experience measurement and improvement. JAMA Health Forum, 6(5), e251223. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2025.1223
2. Ghali W., et al. (2025). Enhancing patient satisfaction and experience through bedside interdisciplinary rounds: A quality improvement study. BMJ Open Quality, 14, e003314. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2025-003314
3. Wang J., et al. (2024). Improving nurse-physician bedside communication using a patient-experience quality improvement pilot project at an academic medical center. Cureus, 16(3), e55976. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.55976
4. Berkowitz, B. (2016). The patient experience and patient satisfaction: Measurement of a complex dynamic. OJIN: Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.3912/OJIN.Vol21No01Man01
5. Burch, P., et al. (2024). Patient-reported measures of continuity of care and health outcomes: A systematic review. BMC Primary Care, 25, 309. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12875-024-02545-8
6. Rejoyn. Clinician Brief Summary.
7. Elevmi internal data.