Start with one unit, one standard, and one reporting question

Choose one unit, one group of staff, and one behavior the institution already teaches. Define the rubric, decide who can see names, run voice practice with AI patients, and review the aggregate pattern before choosing the next training topic.

Yes. An institution can use anonymous participant IDs and receive aggregate unit or cohort results. Named completion records and named coaching reports are separate choices that should follow the training policy and labor agreements set before launch.

ClinicalSim can provide structured aggregate exports for an institution to compare with its own Qualtrics data under an approved study plan. It does not predict Qualtrics or HCAHPS scores, and no current evidence shows that a ClinicalSim score changes them.

Communication with Nurses is a three-item HCAHPS composite. It asks how often, during this hospital stay, nurses treated the patient with courtesy and respect, how often nurses listened carefully to the patient, and how often nurses explained things in a way the patient could understand (CMS HCAHPS survey questions). None of the three asks about clinical accuracy, so what the composite scores is respect, listening, and whether an explanation worked.

Communication with Doctors asks the same three questions as the nurse composite, about doctors: how often doctors treated the patient with courtesy and respect, how often doctors listened carefully, and how often doctors explained things in a way the patient could understand (CMS HCAHPS survey questions). Doctor communication rose 0.8 points from 2008 to 2019, the smallest gain of any HCAHPS domain (Beckett et al., Medical Care 2024).

Patient experience is 25% of a hospital's Total Performance Score under Medicare's Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program, which is funded by a 2% withhold of base operating payments and redistributes about $1.7 billion a year (CMS FY2026 IPPS final rule). Five of the eight HCAHPS measures Medicare pays on are communication measures, roughly 15.6% of the total score (CMS).

HCAHPS arrives as a unit or hospital score, weeks after discharge, about the whole stay. Teams can use it to choose a shared practice focus, while participants review their own simulated feedback under preset access rules. The evidence supports the behaviors: a communication-centered discharge cut 30-day utilization about 30% in a randomized trial (Project RED, Annals of Internal Medicine 2009), and teach-back education cut heart failure readmissions with an odds ratio of 0.40 in a 2023 meta-analysis (Patient Education and Counseling). On training itself, a 2025 review of 14 studies found that in-service communication training of 5.5 to 8 hours improved selected patient experience measures, while a 45-minute session did not and coaching gains faded without boosters (Jesus et al., Medical Care 2025). No study has tested ClinicalSim against HCAHPS scores, and we claim no score-to-survey correlation.

Medicare withholds 2% of base operating payments and redistributes about $1.7 billion a year through value-based purchasing, and patient experience is 25% of that score (CMS FY2026 IPPS final rule). Five of the eight HCAHPS measures Medicare pays on are communication measures, roughly 15.6% of a hospital's total value-based purchasing score (CMS).

A communication-centered discharge process cut 30-day hospital utilization by about 30% in a randomized trial (Project RED, Annals of Internal Medicine 2009), and teach-back education cut heart failure readmissions with an odds ratio of 0.40 in a 2023 meta-analysis (Patient Education and Counseling). Across 19 randomized trials and 3,953 patients, communication interventions at discharge were associated with 30-day readmissions of 9.1% against 13.5% in control groups (RR 0.69; Becker et al., JAMA Network Open 2021). Those trials tested interventions delivered to patients, not clinician training. CMS readmission penalties run $320 million to $563 million a year and reach roughly three quarters of evaluated hospitals (KFF and Definitive Healthcare analyses of CMS data). ClinicalSim itself has not been studied against readmission rates.

Doctor communication rose 0.8 points from 2008 to 2019, the smallest gain of any HCAHPS domain (Beckett et al., Medical Care 2024). That study does not establish why the domain changed less than others. ClinicalSim has not been studied against HCAHPS outcomes.

No. ClinicalSim scores a conversation against published communication frameworks, not against HCAHPS items, and we claim no score-to-survey correlation.

Every patient in a ClinicalSim case is synthetic and written from clinical literature rather than a patient record. The product still handles learner recordings, transcripts, account data, and institutional data. Full detail is on our trust and data handling page.