5 KPIs to help measure patient engagement in your practice

Keeping patients engaged and around is both simpler and more complex than ever. According to Tebra’s 2025 Patient Perspectives survey, an excellent experience with the provider is the top reason patients have seen a healthcare provider multiple times — but overall, the definition of an excellent experience has expanded beyond patient care.

You already invest in patient engagement through technology, a welcoming front office, and high-quality care. But how do you know if those investments are paying off? Many healthcare organizations struggle to answer that question and get caught up in daily operations instead of tracking how effective their initiatives are.

“Unfortunately, providers tend to do a fairly bad job at measuring levels of engagement,” Jan Oldenburg, principal and patient engagement strategist at Participatory Health Consulting, says.

That’s a risky oversight. Measuring patient engagement is as important to your practice’s health as tracking retention rates and denied claims. This guide outlines the key performance indicators (KPIs) you need to evaluate what’s working, fix what isn’t, and build a practice patients won’t want to leave.

If you want to measure patient engagement, begin with these 5 KPIs. These healthcare metrics provide valuable, data-driven insights into the patient experience at your practice.

“Practices need to pay attention to their patient portal as their digital front door,” Oldenburg says. Patients now expect their healthcare experience to be as convenient as banking or shopping, and a portal is the primary hub for that convenience.

Instead of just tracking enrollment numbers, dig deeper into which features patients actually use. Tebra’s survey found that many of the digital tools that make the biggest difference in the patient experience happen to be directly tied to patient portal functionality. For instance, the biggest difference for 48% of patients comes from accessing lab results or visit summaries online, while patients also name appointment reminders (75), appointment scheduling (43%) and rescheduling (40%), and secure messaging with the provider (40%) as important.

If your patient portal or feature adoption is low, it could signal a disconnect. You may need to give patients educational materials about how and why to use the portal, or you may need to audit its capabilities to ensure they actually meet patient needs.

It is also important to make sure that these tools create operational efficiency within back-end workflows. Staff are unlikely to promote a portal that makes their own jobs more difficult.

Your practice website is one of the early interactions new patients might have with your brand. Tebra’s research shows that 51% of patients use online reviews when choosing a new doctor, often leading them directly to your website for validation. Your site must offer accurate, complete information about your providers, services, and billing practices to build patient trust from the first click.

Go beyond surface-level traffic and track specific website engagement KPIs like monthly unique visitors, time on page for key service lines, and bounce rates. Do visitors find the information engaging and relevant, or do they leave quickly? Analyzing which pages they spend the most time on — such as provider bios or insurance information — can give you valuable insights into what matters most to your audience. If you don’t know these answers, you’re missing a key opportunity to understand your patients’ needs and improve the impression you make. 

This KPI speaks to post-visit engagement and patient satisfaction. A difficult financial experience can undermine excellent clinical care.

“We tend to think about quality of care as a metric that’s very separate from the billing experience,” Oldenburg says. “But in fact, if people have a terrible billing experience, it impacts how they think about the quality of the whole experience.” 

Tebra’s 2025 Patient Perspectives survey found that 28% of patients who left a provider did so because of issues with cost or billing. To improve this metric, focus on the entire financial workflow. Implement price transparency, offer clear statements, and provide convenient online bill pay options. Surveying patients specifically about their billing experience can uncover friction points in your revenue cycle that also hurt patient retention.

Your late cancellation and no-show rates give you information about not just appointment scheduling but also patient access.

A high rate could signal that your wait times are too long — a major factor in patient retention. Tebra’s survey data shows that 51% of patients would consider switching providers due to long waits, while 27% have already left a practice for lack of timely appointment access.

Online scheduling is a powerful tool to reduce missed appointments and improve this KPI. When patients can see all available appointments and easily reschedule online, they are less likely to cancel outright. This convenience is a key driver of loyalty, as easy scheduling is a big reason (54%) patients return to the same provider, according to Tebra’s data.

While you should always monitor formal complaints, it’s equally important to track informal patient feedback, particularly on social media and public review sites.

“Practices tend to think of social media as a broadcast mechanism, but it can also be a listening device,” Oldenburg says.

Monitoring your online reputation provides real-time and unfiltered patient feedback about your practice’s workflows, from the front desk experience to care delivery. Responding to this feedback, positive and negative, demonstrates that you value patients’ perspectives and are committed to improving. This can have a direct impact on retention, as Tebra’s 2025 survey found that 78% of patients would go back to a practice if it addressed their concerns after a negative online review. It can also impact referrals.

Key metrics to track here include your average star rating, review volume, and the recurring themes in patient comments.

Measuring key performance indicators is a critical first step, but quantitative data tells only part of the story. To really understand the patient experience, you need to combine these metrics with qualitative feedback. Here are 3 strategies for gathering the insights you need to improve patient engagement.

Don’t let days or weeks go by before you ask for patient feedback. “People want to be surveyed while the information is fresh in their minds,” Oldenburg says.

The best time to send a survey is within hours of a patient visit. Test various methods — such as using automation to send text messages, emails, or QR codes — to discover which channel yields the highest response rate for your patient demographics. Also invest in learning how to design an effective patient experience survey to get the best engagement data.

Generic satisfaction surveys often miss the mark. To get actionable insights, ask questions that directly address the factors that Tebra’s data shows drive patient churn. Instead of a simple “How was your visit?,” consider questions like:

These questions target the top reasons patients consider switching providers: poor provider interaction (68%), long wait times (51%), and a bad front desk experience (46%), according to Tebra’s 2025 data. Focusing your survey on these known friction points will streamline your survey and provide much more valuable patient feedback.

Technology is a great tool for gathering data, but don’t underestimate the power of a simple, human conversation. Oldenburg suggests asking providers to discuss the overall experience directly with patients.

A question as simple as, “How has everything been with your visits here?” can uncover issues that patients might not mention in a satisfaction survey. “Having your doctor ask you about your experience is a great loyalty builder,” Oldenburg says.

These patient engagement metrics might seem to be numbers on a dashboard, but they're really a direct line to understanding your patients’ needs and expectations. A high cancellation rate isn’t only a scheduling problem, but also a tangible sign of the frustration that makes 51% of patients consider leaving over long wait times, according to Tebra’s survey data. A low portal adoption rate points to missed opportunities for the digital convenience that is a key driver of retention.

By consistently measuring these KPIs and listening to both quantitative and qualitative feedback, your practice can move from being reactive to proactive. You can address the small frustrations before they become reasons for patients to leave, build patient trust, and create the kind of positive healthcare experience that fosters long-term loyalty. Ultimately, measuring patient engagement is about building a practice that not only treats conditions but also values the patient behind the chart.