When patients get lost, it costs you. It impacts the overall patient experience AND it comes with a hard cost as well. From the time staff spend directing lost patients, to late arrivals and missed appointments, the expense adds up quickly. These twelve stats show what the true impact is when patients can’t physically navigate your health system.
How does getting lost affect patients?
- In a 2026 Harris Poll survey for Gozio, 79% of US adults said they feel stress around in-person medical appointments, and 43% have switched providers or avoided returning partly because the location was hard to get to.
- Navigational issues in hospitals cause stress and anxiety for patients and visitors.
- More than 85% of patients ask for directions when they go to a hospital or other public health facility, and 30% of first-time visitors get lost.
How much staff time goes to giving directions?
- One study found that lost patients cost a hospital $220,000 a year in staff time.
- Staff took 1.5 minutes to give patients directions and 5.3 minutes to walk a lost person to where they needed to go.
- Staff members spent an average of 40 hours a year giving directions to patients and visitors.
- 25% of hospital staff members can’t find some destinations on their own campus.
How do lost patients affect schedules and appointments?
- One study found that no-show rates averaged 18.8% across hospital clinics, and other research has found that up to 31% of patients arrive late for appointments.
- 40% of hospitals reported idle staff while waiting for late patients.
Does digital wayfinding help?
- Health systems using Gozio’s digital wayfinding see an average of 32% fewer missed appointments.
- 65% of users of Boston Children’s Hospital’s wayfinding app said it improved their experience.
- 77% of hospital visitors say digital wayfinding improves their experience.
With staffing shortages, it is harder and harder to spend time walking patients to their destination. At the same time, missed and late appointments are costly. Missed appointments cost healthcare over $150B a year in lost revenue. Late arrivals put the schedule behind and impact the experience for staff and other patients.If you could reduce late or missed appointments by even a few percent, what would the impact be? If you could eliminate the lost productivity from directing patients, what would the impact be?
