Background: The relationship between the physician and patient is directly associated with positive patient satisfaction. High patient satisfaction is associated with improved health outcomes, treatment adherence, and quality of life. The goal was to explore patients’ perceptions on their hospital experience, focusing on quality of care. Methods: A mixed-methods study design with a sample of 58 patients at Yale New Haven Hospital. Data were from patient interviews and observation of rounds. Results: Two themes emerged: patient experience and patient communication with physicians. Within patient experience positive factors identified were feeling attended to (45.9%), nurses (43.2%), staff (27.0%), doctors (27.0%), facility (10.8%) and coordination of care (8.1%). Negative factors were low quality of life (82.8%), lack of physician emotional support, attentiveness and availability (24.1%), and poor coordination of care (20.7%). Within physician communication positive factors included effectively engaging the patient (27.5%) and attending to patient needs (7.5%). Negative factors were nature of distilling information (17.5%), lack of coordination of care (15.0%), inadequate involvement of the patient and/or family (12.5%), use of medical jargon (10.0%), and inability to elicit patients’ perspective (7.5%). The quantitative data supported qualitative results of overall satisfaction with 72.4% of patients (n = 58) rating their experience as an ‘A’. Areas of dissatisfaction (an ‘A’ rating < 70% of time) included describing team member roles, explaining next steps in care or treatment to the patient and/or family, and meeting patients’ needs. Conclusions: Our findings, demonstrate that physician attentiveness or lack thereof defines the quality of patient experience, is an important theme in communication and that patients perceive their needs are not being fully addressed. Agreement in themes from mixed-method approach shows effectiveness of methods in exploring patients’ perceptions on quality of care. The study intends to inform clinical and operational practices physicians can incorporate into their patient relationships. These data are being used to design a faculty development program to address physician communication.