Hospitals who prioritise empathy are safer, healthier and cheaper to run, study finds

NHS hospital trusts with higher levels of “system empathy” have 76% higher odds of being rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ for patient safety by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), finds a new study by the University of Leicester.

Researchers from the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare developed and validated the first composite index of system-level empathy across NHS trusts in England. They analysed national data across nine organisational dimensions, including compassionate culture, leadership quality, teamwork, staffing levels, and staff wellbeing.

A modest improvement in a trust’s empathy score was also associated with:

- 46% higher odds of achieving a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ effectiveness rating

- Significantly lower staff burnout and absenteeism, with measurable improvements in self-reported health and wellbeing

- Reduced agency spend: trusts with lower empathy scores spent £5.4 million more on temporary staff and £760,000 more on external consultancy per year than higher-scoring trusts

“This is the first time we have been able to put a number on empathy at the system level and show clearly that it makes a difference to patient safety, staff wellbeing, and the bottom line. Empathy is a strategic imperative.”

— Professor Jeremy Howick, Director, Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare

The average trust score was 5.99 out of 10, with meaningful variation across the system (range: 4.88–6.78). Previous major NHS inquiries — including the Francis Report into Mid Staffordshire and the Ockenden Review into Shrewsbury and Telford maternity services — repeatedly identified a lack of empathy as a factor in preventable deaths. Until now, empathy had been studied almost exclusively at the level of individual clinician–patient interactions; this study examines it across entire organisations.

“Investments in compassionate leadership, staff wellbeing, sustainable staffing, and inclusive culture are not simply ‘nice to have’ — they are associated with measurable improvements in patient safety and organisational efficiency.”

— Dr Amber Bennett-Weston, Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare

The authors are calling on healthcare organisations and policymakers to treat system empathy as a strategic priority and are working to validate the System Empathy Index in independent datasets and establish causal relationships through longitudinal studies.

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Notes to editors

Full reference: Howick, Jeremy and Bennett-Weston, Amber and Oke, Jason, Do More Empathic Hospital Trusts Have Better Outcomes? Developing and Testing a System Empathy Index (May 21, 2026). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6842238 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6842238

For more information, or to speak with the researchers, please contact Alex Lopez at alex@bluesky-pr.com, or call +44 (0)1582 797959.