The Patient Journey: Meaning & How To Map It Out
By Angela Kayode-Sanni
| Last updated:
Apr 23
|
9 min read
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The term, patient journey is similar to a customer experience journey, which refers to offering a service in a way that fixes the customer’s pain points, with a focus on ensuring a positive experience, across all touch points through which a customer interacts with your brand. The focus here is to consolidate all the emotional drivers of engagements, to ensure that patients have positive experiences, that propel them to keep interacting with your brand.
Over time, the customer experience has evolved to also include patient experience, which can be managed by mapping out the patient journey.
In this post, we share all you need to know about the patient journey map and how to create one.
The patient journey is a word used to describe the experience of an individual receiving or seeking medical care. In this case, the individual is referred to as a patient. The patient journey includes all aspects of an individual’s experience within a hospital or medical care environment.
It begins with the consultation stage, where a patient seeks to find out more about their health condition. Before this event, there is a stage called the pre-visit stage. This occurs because patients can now find out more about their conditions and organizations suited to handling them, via the web, social media, etc.
The online research stage is what determines the actual physical or online location that they visit.
The second phase is now the earlier mentioned consultation where they meet the medical personnel for in-depth insight into their medical concern and subsequent diagnosis.
The third phase is the treatment stage which involves subsequent visits based on the diagnosis.
It is somewhat similar to the customer journey map with a few notable differences, as illustrated below.
The goal of a patient journey map is to provide maximum satisfaction to the patient, by identifying and proffering custom-fit solutions to the patient’s pain points, while paying attention to the patient’s experience at each stage.
Hence one of the easiest ways to do this is to create a map, showing and interpreting the patient’s experience in other to improve it.
The patient journey is the different phases that impact their experience. The journey is a series of activities geared towards helping the patient meet their goal and most times a patient journey follows a sequential order.
A patient experience on the other hand is everything, every emotion a patient feels as they navigate the patient journey. Every credible organization would love to retain and attract more patients or simply become a go-to solution for medical occurrences in the patient’s life.
However, they sometimes fail to realize that the key to this is a mixture of all the activities and the experience gained that often leads them to choose one organization over the other.
The key to creating an effective patient journey map is not a one size fits all approach, but a personalized solution subject to patients’ individual interaction with the different aspects of your organization.
A patient journey map is a visual illustration of all the steps a patient undergoes as they interact with your organization. Therefore it should include the pre-visit stage and the post-visit phase.
The first step to doing this is, to begin with, an inventory or collection of all the areas or touch points where you gather feedback, even as you pay attention to the specific patient personas, demography, and health conditions.
This step is essential because creating a valuable personalized experience in the healthcare world is not negotiable. Hence, tailoring the map to the specific requirement of each patient class is key.
A patient journey map helps you to tick all the boxes up to the mode of communication touchpoints and ensure that the appropriate channel is employed to deliver the right information in a time-efficient manner.
Therefore, knowing or discovering the preference of your patient, their choices, such as their preferred time or channel of communication, the necessary steps they need to undergo repeatedly to ensure that they get optimal care, etc. is an important aspect when conducting your patient journey.
Let us look at some definitive steps to conducting a patient journey map:
This step is perhaps the most important step that allows you to place your patient in the right groups. It involves knowing the following;
The more insight you have about your patient the better your patient journey experience.
In other to conduct a patient journey map, you must own the process and this means having first-hand knowledge or a thorough understanding of the patient life cycle for each patient category. While an appointment reminder for an expectant mother to come in for their test is great, it would be frustrating to see that they forgot to bring a test sample as required.
In this instance, when sending reminders, it’s best done a day or more before emphasizing that they come in with the required sample while stating any specific instructions like the time of collection, etc.
Understanding a patient’s pain point involves putting yourself in the shoes of your patient. Being able to fully understand and feel all the emotions your patient experiences when engaging with your brand is key in your journey map.
Your ability to walk literally in the shoes of your patient would help build an effective patient engagement strategy. Addressing concerns like how they feel, the strong desire to get better quickly, the fear of the associated cost that comes with healthcare, payment plan options, and the like is a great way to get their loyalty and have them become promoters of your brand.
Customized service in healthcare is just like rabbits to carrots. The two go hand in hand. Customization means creating personalized treatment plans suitable for each individual based on their diagnosis.
To make this happen, you need to gather medical/personal data that provides insight into the patient’s condition. This data can also include their preferred mode of communication, social factors that affect their health, the nature of their career, and more.
All of this data helps you offer a more personalized treatment plan that would ensure their well-being and ultimate loyalty.
You can get started with your patient journey mapping by outlining all the patient’s touchpoints at each stage in their care journey. This would help you create an experience that improves patient engagement, satisfaction, and retention or loyalty.
To do this successfully you begin by capturing and addressing these 6 major stages in the patient journey:
This refers to the stage at which the patient is surfing the internet, making research about their condition in other to get the best facility to manage their concerns.
At this, the patient has made a decision and contacts your organization via emails, a call, or an actual visit to your location.
Here, the patient interacts with a healthcare provider for accurate diagnosis and proposed care options.
This is the commencement of the actual treatment phase, such as tests and medication prescriptions, counseling, or proposed changes in lifestyle.
At this stage, there is follow-up care to ensure that the patients take the recommendations to make the required changes in their behavior and lifestyle for their well-being and full recovery.
This is the patient retention phase, where periodic visits are set up to monitor the patient’s well-being, review symptoms, and generally foster engagement between the patient and physician to ensure a full recovery.
Here you get feedback on the treatments or medication offered and any other information. This feedback would be used to improve the patient journey map and overall experience.
The patient journey mapping process provides benefits like ;
Helping you give a personal and human touch to your treatment plans through personalized care. This is so because the patient journey map gives you a deep understanding of your patient’s unique needs and preferences.
With a journey map, missed opportunities and gaps are highlighted in each stage of interaction with your healthcare system. and you can get a first-hand insight into the emotions patients experience when going through your touchpoints.
Knowledge of these gaps helps you address them swiftly
Boosting your customer retention ratio is one of the benefits of this process. This is so because it fosters improved communication between patients and healthcare providers. That way you get firsthand feedback from your patients, which allows you to see how well or poorly you are doing based on their perspectives.
Moreso, with a journey map you monitor the post-treatment stage of your patients through close supervision. This way, you get to provide personalized support to your patients during the post-treatment phase.
Most importantly, with a patient journey map you get to improve the functionality of your online channels, such as your websites, socials, mobile apps, call centers, etc.
In summary, a patient journey map is an ideal tool that transforms your patient’s experience from reactive to proactive, simply because you preempt their every step and go ahead to remove any gridlock even before they occur.
The idea behind the patient data is to see the end from the beginning. Once you have been able to create a visual picture of this process, you go ahead to do the following in other to use the patient journey data successfully;
Data must be collected from every touch point in the patient journey. This would help you understand the experiences of your patients as they interact with certain aspects of your organization.
For instance, their experience with the customer service desk, the pharmacy, the x-ray or laboratory experiences, and even their experience with your website, scheduling appointments, to mention a few.
Paying attention to this through data collection would unveil the pain points patients experience and you can use this information to address the concerns uncovered.
Read Also – Customer Journey Touchpoints: The Complete Guide
Analytics using smart tools can uncover trends and subsequent pain points in the patient journey. In-depth analytics would provide the insight necessary to improve the overall patient experience.
The smartest way to use your data is to take action. Every data gleaned from your patient journey should result in tangible actions, that would provide maximum results in a way that directly impacts the patient experience positively.
For instance, if a patient provides negative feedback about getting a test done, follow up with the patient to understand why this is happening and reach a resolution by ensuring they have their test done. Subsequently, actively monitor the test department to ensure that no other patient has the same negative experience that would require escalation to resolve.
A patient journey map is a visual illustration of the activities patients get involved in as they interact with an organization to receive medical care. Having a patient journey map is essential to creating a favorable experience with patients that would make them unsolicited promoters of your organization.
Ideally, a patient journey map should capture all the steps taken before a visit to your website or physical location and all the straps taken after care has been provided and administered.
The results are not just the commercial success of your brand but the fulfillment that comes with knowing that you gave your best to each patient and they attest to that.
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