Impact of a Physician Communication Development Program on Patient Experience Scores

Patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) are widely used for quality improvement, benchmarking, and physician compensation, yet few large-scale studies have examined interventions to improve scores. We examine the association of an annual, mandatory, peer-led continuing professional development (CPD) program at a large, multispecialty group practice aimed at enhancing patient–clinician communication. This quality improvement study analyzed ambulatory pre-post patient experience surveys from January 2018 to October 2022 for top box ratings for four PREMs focusing on provider communication for “ explains ”, “ listens ” to them, “ overall provider rating ,” and would “ recommend ” the practice were modeled using generalized estimating equations, adjusting for patient and provider characteristics. Over 1 million surveys per year were analyzed and the likelihood of top-box response in all four domains increased post implementation in 2019- 2022 compared to 2018 with all adjusted odds ratios > 1.0 and p ≤ 0.001. Our findings suggest CPD programs may improve PREMs in a large healthcare system, across all communication-related domains. However, there could be limits and a plateau to how much a CPD intervention can improve PREMs.