The One Number We Obsess Over: A Q&A on Net Promoter Score (NPS) at Kinomatic

Whether you’re a patient weighing joint replacement surgery or a surgeon considering how Kinomatic fits into your practice, you’ll eventually hear us talk about NPS, or Net Promoter Score. It sounds like a business term, and it is one, but underneath it is a simple, human question we take seriously: would you recommend us to someone you love? We sat down with Samantha Myers, VP of Brand and Experience at Kinomatic, to talk about what that question really means, why it matters more in healthcare than almost anywhere else, and what Kinomatic is doing to make sure the answer is a 10/10 yes.

Samantha MyersVP, Brand and Experience, Kinomatic

Before we get into any metric, why does Kinomatic even ask patients if they’d recommend us?

We ask because we want to know, honestly, whether a patient would recommend Kinomatic and their surgeon to someone they love. Aside from their mobility and pain, that’s another measure of whether what we’re doing is working. It tells us where we’re doing well and exactly where we need to improve.

We read every single response that comes in. If someone comes back as a Detractor, we review those comments every quarter and build an action plan around them. And if someone lands in the middle (aka Passive), we prioritize understanding what would have made their experience good enough to become a Promoter. We take the score seriously enough that we’re reviewing it continuously, not just once a year.

For anyone who wants the mechanics behind it, especially our surgeon partners, what is NPS and how is it scored?

NPS is one question, scored 0 to 10: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or family member?”

People who answer 9 or 10 are considered Promoters, genuinely glad they chose us. A 7 or 8 is a Passive, satisfied but not enthusiastic. A 0 through 6 is a Detractor, someone who had a real gap somewhere in their experience.^[1]

The score itself is the percentage of Promoters minus the percentage of Detractors. Fred Reichheld built the framework with Bain & Company in 2003,^[2] and two decades later it’s still used because it cuts through vague satisfaction ratings and gets at the one thing that actually predicts whether someone tells others about you.

Why does this matter more in healthcare than in a lot of other industries?

Because trust is the entire foundation of a surgical decision, and word of mouth is how that trust gets passed along. Advertising can open the door, but it’s rarely what closes the decision. Patients choose a surgeon because someone they trust said, “go see this person, they took care of me.”

For patients, that means every experience either strengthens or weakens the recommendation you might one day give someone facing the same decision you once faced. For surgeons and practices, it means your reputation compounds, in both directions. Bain’s own research has found that companies that consistently create value for customers carry Net Promoter Scores roughly twice as high as the average company.^[3]

There’s also a healthcare-specific piece worth knowing. Hospitals already report a federal patient experience survey called HCAHPS to CMS, tied to reimbursement. Researchers at NRC Health have started studying whether NPS can actually predict HCAHPS results ahead of time.^[4] So this isn’t just a marketing number. It’s increasingly connected to the metrics that shape how care itself gets evaluated.

So what’s typical, or good, in healthcare compared to other industries?

Context matters here. A score means nothing on its own. According to Retently’s 2026 benchmark report, based on more than 10,000 survey responses per industry, healthcare services average an NPS of 37.^[5] For comparison:

Source: Retently, 2026 NPS benchmarks by industry.

Healthcare sits in the lower quadrant, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s high stakes, often high anxiety, and patients don’t always get much say in who treats them or how the experience unfolds. That’s the gap we think Kinomatic is positioned to close, especially in orthopedic surgery, where patients are informed, engaged, and actively choosing their surgeon and their plan of care. We’d rather be measured against the best experiences anywhere, not just the healthcare average.

Where does trust typically break down for surgical patients?

The surgical journey spans roughly 3,000 hours of preparation and recovery against about one hour of actual surgery, and it’s in that gap that trust breaks down. The traditional model can feel disjointed and confusing for patients.

When no one is coordinating that in-between space, patients can feel unsure what’s normal, unsupported in managing pain, and like they’ve been handed a generic plan instead of one built around them. That’s where confidence erodes, and it’s exactly where we’ve focused our energy.

What is Kinomatic doing differently to change that?

Everything we build starts from the same idea: patients should never feel like they’re managing their own care alone. A few things we’re doing specifically:

• Custom surgical planning. Every plan is built around a patient’s own anatomy vs a one-size-fits-all default. Precise measurements mean a better starting point.
• VR surgical simulation. Surgeons rehearse each case before entering the OR, so they can prepare for optimal performance.
• An evidence-based, opioid-sparing recovery protocol. Built on Dr. Andrew Wickline’s research and his book Less Swelling, Less Pain, the goal is to give patients a real alternative to defaulting to narcotics for pain management.
• A dedicated patient navigator for every patient. Someone who regularly checks in on you and knows your why, so you feel genuinely cared for and supported throughout the journey.
• A personalized care journey, not a checklist. From pre-surgery preparation through post-op milestones, the plan is tailored to each patient’s unique needs and preferences.

We call this “with you every step of the way” internally, and we mean it literally. It’s the difference between being accompanied through a surgical episode and being processed through one.

What does that actually look like day to day for a patient?

Day to day, this shows up as our patient check-ins. Every patient works with a patient navigator who checks in through a consistent set of touchpoints, including phone calls, emails, or text messages depending on the patient’s preference. Right now that’s roughly 10 to 14 planned touchpoints per patient. Each recovery check-in walks through a standard set of questions about pain and mobility, so we know exactly how a patient is progressing after surgery.

But the part I love most is something we ask before surgery: what’s your “why”? For some patients it’s a vacation they’ve put off for years. For others it’s a hike or a bike ride they haven’t been able to do since the pain started, or it might be simply getting down on the floor to play with their grandchildren. We track that “why,” and our patient navigators check back in throughout recovery to ask if they’re getting back to it.

That’s the full-circle moment that makes this work meaningful. Hearing a patient say they went grocery shopping without pain again, or got to spend real time with the people they love, that’s the quality of life we’re actually measuring. We take that as seriously as any clinical outcome.

How will you know this is actually working?

NPS is a companywide target and something we already track closely. We read every response, and if someone comes back a Detractor, we build a quarterly action plan around it. We’ve set an ambitious internal goal of an NPS of 85 or higher, and we’ve hit it. That’s 2.3x against the healthcare average of 37 and we intend to hold that line even as we grow.

What’s the moment that makes patient experience personal, not just something you manage?

I have so many moments, but the one that resonates most is a patient who recently left a review for Kinomatic. She had a complex condition and multiple surgeons turned down her case before she found one of our Kinomatic surgeons. Because he had Kinomatic’s custom surgical plan going into the OR, he was able to take on a case most people wouldn’t touch. She’s since reported a great outcome, and she credits Kinomatic for it.

I’ve also seen this up close in my own life. I’ve had family members go through orthopedic surgery, and I’ve supported them through it. What struck me every time was how unprepared and confused patients and caregivers are, not because they aren’t capable, but because nobody set them up for what was coming.

As mentioned before, a total joint replacement is roughly 3,000 hours of a patient’s life, start to recovery, and only one of those hours happens in the OR. That leaves 2,999 hours where the patient is largely on their own. What I care about most, in my role, is making sure patients feel prepared and confident for those 2,999 hours, not just the one. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people in total knee or total hip replacement patient forums asking strangers online whether what they’re feeling is normal. My hope for every Kinomatic patient is that they never have to ask a forum that question, because they already have someone on their care team to ask directly.

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