Qualtrics acquires Press Ganey Forsta in $6.75B deal to redefine AI-powered patient experience

Qualtrics is making a massive bet on the future of AI in healthcare. The company announced Monday that it has completed its $6.75 billion acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta, bringing one of the largest healthcare experience datasets under the Qualtrics umbrella.

The deal marks the largest tech acquisition in Utah history and pushes Qualtrics deeper into the race to use AI to predict patient behavior, improve care experiences, and help healthcare systems respond faster before problems escalate.

The acquisition combines Qualtrics’ Experience Management platform with Press Ganey Forsta’s healthcare-focused patient experience and benchmarking systems, which are used by more than 41,000 healthcare facilities worldwide, including most major U.S. hospitals.

The move comes as healthcare systems face a new kind of pressure. Patients no longer compare their hospital visit to another hospital across town. They compare it to Amazon, Uber, Apple, and every smooth digital experience they interact with daily. AI has raised expectations across nearly every industry, and healthcare is now being pulled into that shift.

The acquisition closes more than six months after the Financial Times first reported in October 2025 that Qualtrics was preparing a major healthcare push through a $6.75 billion deal for Press Ganey Forsta.

The larger goal goes far beyond patient surveys.

Inside Qualtrics’ $6.75B bet on AI, patient experience, and the future of healthcare

Qualtrics aims to build AI systems that analyze patient feedback, operational data, caregiver sentiment, and behavioral patterns in real time to help healthcare organizations anticipate problems before they escalate into complaints, burnout, or poor outcomes.

The company argues that large language models alone lack the context needed to handle sensitive human interactions in healthcare settings. By feeding those systems decades of patient voice data and operational signals, Qualtrics believes AI can move from reactive reporting into predictive decision-making.

“AI permanently changed what people expect from every experience in their lives,” said Jason Maynard, CEO of Qualtrics. “That’s why the future will be won in the Experience Gap. Leaders want to deliver intelligent, responsive, and predictable human experiences. In the age of AI, experience is now the differentiator in every industry, and for the first time ever that problem can be solved in healthcare.”

That phrase, “Experience Gap,” sits at the center of Qualtrics’ pitch.

The company describes it as the widening gap between what patients expect from healthcare providers and what hospitals and health systems can realistically deliver. Patients now arrive informed, anxious, impatient, and armed with AI tools on their phones. Healthcare providers, meanwhile, are struggling with staffing shortages, administrative overload, rising costs, and growing demand for personalized care.

Press Ganey brings something many AI startups lack: proprietary healthcare data collected over decades. Its systems are deeply embedded inside hospitals, clinics, and health networks, giving Qualtrics access to a large stream of patient experience signals tied to clinical and operational environments.

That data advantage could become increasingly important as healthcare AI shifts from chatbots and documentation tools to systems that simulate outcomes, predict patient needs, and guide decisions across care delivery.

Industry leaders appear eager to support that direction.

“The opportunity ahead for healthcare is not simply more data or more AI, it is the ability to turn insight into timely, human-centered action,” said David Entwistle, President and CEO of Stanford Health Care.

Steve Arner, President and CEO of Carilion Clinic, said healthcare systems need better visibility into what patients and caregivers are experiencing in real time. Stephen J. Motew, M.D., President and CEO of UF Health, said the combined platform could help healthcare organizations “surface real-time insights, act faster and continuously elevate our standard of care.”

Analysts see the deal as part of a much larger shift taking place across enterprise software.

“Qualtrics’ acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta reflects a broader industry shift toward unifying experience and operational data to power AI-driven decision-making,” said Keith Kirkpatrick, VP & Research Director with The Futurum Group.

The acquisition gives Qualtrics something many enterprise AI companies are chasing right now: proprietary industry-specific data at scale.

That race is becoming one of the defining battles of the AI economy. Companies with exclusive datasets tied to healthcare, finance, law, logistics, and customer behavior are increasingly seen as having an edge over competitors that rely solely on public models.

For Qualtrics, healthcare may now become the company’s biggest proving ground yet.

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