Hospitals are a linchpin of many communities. They play a vital role in people's lives from birth to death, and at countless milestones in between. Modern healthcare has come to rely on hospitals as hubs of care. Working in a hospital is a high-stakes, high-pressure environment, where outcomes and quality of care are ultimately driven by the people delivering them. Because hospitals sit at the centre of some of the most stressful moments in people's lives, how well they function is critical for the patients they treat, and for the employees responsible for caring for them.
COVID-19 exposed just how critical a healthy workforce is to healthcare. Burnout, early retirement, and staff leaving hospitals, or the healthcare field completely, have shown how central employee wellbeing is to keeping the system running. Hospitals remain understaffed today and must attract and retain a healthy workforce in the years ahead. (Read the 2026 Report)
Interactions between patients and hospital staff are key to creating a workplace that fosters the best patient outcomes, and the research backs this up. A 2014 study in The Lancet, tracking more than 420,000 surgical patients across 300 hospitals, found that for every additional patient added to a nurse's workload, the chances of mortality within 30 days of admission rose by 7%. By contrast, for every 10% increase in the share of nurses holding a bachelor's degree, those odds fell by 7%. A better-educated, less overworked nursing workforce measurably improves patient outcomes.
This isn't a new finding. In 2002, a landmark JAMA study found that each additional patient added to a nurse's workload also raised the odds of nurse burnout by 23%. Burnout, in turn, drives departures. A recent meta-analysis of 75 studies covering more than 3.3 million nurses found an average nurse turnover rate of roughly 15%. Additionally, the study found a concerningly high turnover intention rate, with roughly 38% of nurses saying they plan to leave. This signals that the number of unhappy or at-risk employees is far larger than the number who have actually left their positions; however, this may lead their work to suffer.
To test whether patient outcomes are closely tied to workforce experience, we examined whether the world's best-performing hospitals also prioritize employee wellbeing.
Our analysis was conducted using EXcelerate, an AI-powered analytics tool built by Welliba. EXcelerate pulls publicly available data from online sources, and by organising this passive data and applying psychometric analysis, builds a score breakdown using the Welliba EX Model. This produces an evaluation of employee sentiment and insight into each hospital's workforce, which can then be translated into scalable solutions.
Using Welliba's EXcelerate platform, we ran a correlation analysis between employee satisfaction and the ranks of the 250 highest-ranked hospitals worldwide as reported by Newsweek's 2026 Global Hospital Rankings. We found that for every one-point increase in a hospital's average EX Score, its rank could potentially improve by as much as 22 positions. The strength of this relationship varied somewhat depending on the number of hospitals included in a given sample. Each hospital's country was controlled for using a location-based coefficient to account for differences in national healthcare infrastructure and systems (coef=-22.39, p=0.144).
Wellbeing metrics were broken down into 24 subcategories and compared against hospital rank. Three factors stood out as significant: opportunities for learning and development, company brand and reputation, and equipment and technology.
Opportunities for learning and development (coef=-26.24, p=0.002) were the strongest predictor of hospital rank. Healthcare is an ever-changing field, and staying current with the latest research and practices is essential to both positive patient outcomes and a well-run, up-to-date hospital.
Company brand and reputation (coef=-18.76, p=0.024) correlated closely with hospital rank. A strong reputation feeds a cycle of outcomes. It helps attract funding, earns patient trust, and reinforces employees' pride in where they work, which contributes to performance.
Equipment and technology (coef=-15.13, p=0.020) was found as a third significant factor. A positive employee response to equipment and technology is expected, since up-to-date tools are critical to strong research and patient outcomes, and adequate equipment can meaningfully reduce workload for hospital staff.
Two factors moved in the opposite direction from what we expected: career progression (coef=21.91, p=0.009) and flexible work arrangements (coef=16.10, p=0.041) both correlated negatively with hospital rank. Context likely explains both. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many hospital staff have been promoted or handed expanded responsibilities simply to fill gaps left by departing colleagues. This creates a pattern that continues to strain the system rather than reflect deliberate, well-supported career growth. And flexible scheduling, while broadly beneficial in most industries, runs up against the realities of round-the-clock patient care, which can only absorb so much scheduling flexibility before it compromises coverage.
Cleveland Clinic illustrates this well. It is ranked the world's 3rd-best hospital on Newsweek and Statista's World's Best Hospitals 2026 list and sits in the top 10% of hospitals by EX Score. Its standout drivers, learning and development, company brand and reputation, and equipment and technology, strongly match the factors identified above.
London Bridge Hospital tells the opposite story. It fell to rank 226 on the same list while sitting in the bottom 10% of hospitals by EX Score. One standout issue was a low score on employee workload. This ranking is consistent with the research above showing that overworked staff are associated with worse patient outcomes.
Hospitals are among the most demanding places to work, and among the highest-stakes places to get workforce decisions wrong. The evidence ranging from both previous research and our own EXcelerate analysis supports that staffing cuts and burnout aren't simply HR problems. They are patient safety problems, with a measurable price tag. In hospitals, employee experience isn't just a wellness initiative; it's a performance driver and guardrail for patient safety.
Welliba is an award-winning provider of AI-powered people and organizational insight. Welliba's platform captures authentic external sentiment, validates it against robust models such as employee experience, candidate experience, and leadership, to deliver instant,
competitor-aware recommendations that drive retention, attraction and performance - without needing surveys.
Jake Mealy is Chief Data Solutions Officer at Welliba. He spent a decade helping businesses turn data into better decisions, most recently leading a team of data analysts at Indeed focused on enterprise value. Before that, he worked in marketing analytics consulting at Analytic Partners. Jake holds a PhD in Bioengineering from Trinity College Dublin and now applies that background to employee experience, exploring new ways technology can improve the workplace.