Dissecting Patient Journey Mapping

Healthcare providers wish to acquire new patients and retain the ones that receive their services. 

Some of the best strategies to do so would involve plugging the service quality gaps and improving patient satisfaction. 

Patient Journey Map allows you to achieve this by identifying all the touchpoints on the patient journey and listing the pain points.

Factors that could result in anything from decreasing patient satisfaction to patients choosing a different healthcare provider.

Read along to dig deeper into the patient journey map and what it can do for you.  

What is Patient Journey Mapping?

A patient journey map is a comprehensive visual representation of a patient’s interaction with the healthcare system throughout their care journey.

Created to develop an understanding of the patient's perspective it is aimed at building the foundation for strategic outreach resulting in an enhanced patient experience and engagement. 

Types of Patient Journey Mapping

Within the healthcare industry, the following types of patient journey maps are prevalent.

• Mental (cognitive) Map - it is based on the perception of an individual (patient) perception about the product or service of a healthcare giver. For this model, the individual’s rationale behind a decision is assessed and integrated to improve the system accordingly. 
• Experience Map - it takes a broad perspective of an individual's experience of different organizations, products, and services to meet their needs throughout their patient journey. 
• Customer Journey Map - perceives the patient journey as that of a product or service consumer and examines the relationship of a patient with a particular product or service.
• Service Blueprint Map - focuses on the service delivery and its associated pain points by taking into account both the patient’s perspective and the healthcare giver’s perspective at the backend. 
• Spatial Map - presents a holistic view of the healthcare organization by using individual and organizational models to represent patient and organization relationships. 

Stages of the Patient Journey 

Before we delve into the patient journey mapping, it is important to understand the various stages of a patient journey. 

It can broadly be categorized into;

• Pre-Visit Stage
• Visit Stage
• Post-Visit Stage

Let us explore each of these stages one by one. 

Pre-Visit Stage

As the name suggests, this is the stage before an actual visit. 

It is important to consider it because a patient's journey starts when they first feel the need for medical care and may undergo several sub-stages before finalizing a care provider. 

Awareness

At this stage, prospective patients realize they have a health issue that needs medical attention. 

The initial awareness stage of a patient journey will include;

• Consulting friends and family
• Conducting internet searches 
• Reading reviews 
• Seeking opinions within online communities 
• Checking out marketing ads 
• Contacting healthcare representatives 

Google terms this stage as the Zero Moment of Truth, where the individual first searches a business, in our case a healthcare provider, online. 

Grasping the interest of a prospective patient at this stage is the first step to patient acquisition. 

Consideration

At this stage, patients weigh their options and decide the care provider they wish to consult. 

Several factors go into deciding the healthcare provider patients wish to go with. 

These include;

• Coverage and perks of the healthcare package
• Referrals, ratings, and reviews from online communities and trusted individuals
• Accessibility of information and communication (via call, email, or social media)

The pre-visit stage or the zero moment of truth constitutes the initial contact of the patient with a potential care provider. 

Ensuring a  decent online presence, complete with patient referrals and ratings at this stage will encourage them to choose you. 

You should also be accessible and available for inquiries, have compassionate care representatives, and offer simple and easy appointment scheduling options.  

Visit Stage

Initial Contact

It begins when the patient first decides to get your services.

The access stage of the patient journey may include;

• Online/ in-person appointment booking
• Patients sharing their medical documents
• Initial visit to the healthcare provider

Patients can be acquired at this by offering guidance, pointing out relevant facilities and services, and ensuring lesser wait times. 

Great communications, reminders, and excellent healthcare services at this stage ensure the patients continue to use your services. 

Care 

Patient condition diagnosis may or may not happen at the first appointment, depending on whether some tests are needed to assess their situation. 

Either way, at this stage a physician will give them a diagnosis of their health conditions, lay out their medical options, advise the most suitable one, and start treatment. 

It is the care and later recovery that matters the most from the patient’s point of view and needs the bulk of attention from the care provider.

Part of the care provision services include timely and efficient sharing of information (e.g. medical results), communication about appointments, and other information. 

The stage can be optimized by offering a smooth checking-in, medical examination, and diagnosis, clear explanations, timely communication, and offering emotional support. 

While not specific to the care stage, the option for a telehealth consultation can be very important for patient retention. 

Post Visit 

Recovery 

This is the stage beyond the initial few appointments, where the diagnosis has been given, treatment initiated, and the patient's condition improving. 

They will receive care instructions, changes, or adaptions they may need to make, and either receive information for future appointments or for payment and checkout. 

In case of surgery, patients will need on-site admission, monitoring, and rehabilitation visits after discharge. 

On-Going Care

Recovery often extends beyond the premises of the healthcare facility after they have checked out and continues at the patient’s home as they ease back into their normal routine. 

It may involve the patient recovering and paying subsequent visits to the healthcare provider.

They receive communication about their wellness and care management in between the visits.

To truly capture patient retention potential care providers could communicate with patients to ensure their recovery is going per expectations, and offer information and solutions to nurture them.  

It is also a great idea to get feedback from your patients during the visit and post-visit stage and incorporate that into your ongoing improvement process. 

How to Create a Patient Journey Map

Define Goals for the Patient Journey Map

The first step in creating a patient journey map is to clearly define the problem at hand for which you are undertaking the mapping. 

Is it to increase patient acquisition? Or to increase patient retention? Or any other metrics on which your organization is falling behind?

Also, you need to identify what you wish to achieve with the map.

Once you figure these out, you will be able to put in writing, clear goals and objectives that you wish to achieve with the map. 

Create Patient Personas & Define Their Goals

With your goals and objectives in place, you need to create the patient personas.

A patient persona is the theoretical embodiment of the medical issues, behaviors, and interests shown by your typical patient. 

To create effective patient personas you need information like;

• Demographic - information like age, gender, financial status
• Health goals - medical conditions, healthcare challenges (pain points), past treatment
• Engagement -  (your) past service utilization, feedback, communication channels
• Services - appropriateness of what you offer for their health (and related concerns)

You can collect this detailed information about your patients through patient feedback forms, questionnaires, interviews, and in-house data collection.

The purpose of creating a persona is to identify the sort of people that access your healthcare services and their needs and expectations. 

Defining your patient persona would therefore also require you to attribute the healthcare goals to each of your personas. 

Some might be coming to get a diagnosis for a chronic condition while others may just visit for a routine checkup to see if everything is ok. 

Highlight Target Patient Personas

Depending on your needs you may be creating more than one patient persona. 

Once the exercise is complete and you have profiles for all sorts of patients engaging with your healthcare organization, your next goal is to narrow the pool. 

Identify the ones that align most closely with your goals for creating a patient journey map in the first place. 

Map Patient Touchpoints

The next step in the process would be to map all the points of patient interaction, referred to as the patient touchpoints.

Touchpoints Through Stages of the Patient Journey

You already have all the typical touchpoints valid for your organization thanks to the research undertaken for creating the personas.

Identify the ones your ideal patient persona uses in its interaction with your organization at each stage of the patient journey.

Starting at the pre-visit stage, how did they first interact with you? Was it through social media, inquiry at the call center, or a walk-in at the reception?

Repeat the process for all the stages of a patient journey. Figure out the touchpoints they should have used but are not using. 

Patient Pain Points

You have the list of typical actions a patient takes to learn about you and get your services. It is time to find out the hurdles in their way. 

Figure out the difficulties they might face. 

Is appointment scheduling an easy and smooth process? Do the patients get appropriate and timely communication from the healthcare provider?

Are the consultations with the physicians and care services up to their expectations?

Patient Feelings

Understanding the emotional state of your patients through the patient journey is paramount to assessing the actions patients take. 

Patients make decisions and choose a particular healthcare provider, even a physician depending on how they feel about these. 

Remember that the emotional state will not remain constant throughout the patient journey. 

Having this piece of information will help you attend to patient concerns better and incorporate them into your continuous improvement process. 

Identify Available Resources and Resource Gaps

Although the patient journey map is a view of your services from the patient's perspective, it also takes into account the resources necessary to provide the desired services. 

Begin by creating an inventory of the resources available to provide a smooth patient journey. See how it helps your patients. 

Next, identify the resource gaps and advise management on the ones you need. Some of the resources that could help you improve your patient experience are listed below. 

Automation Tools

Regardless of how well-defined and seamless your processes are, things can slip through manual processes. 

Using automation processes ensures everything runs smoothly, increasing patient satisfaction and retention. 

Some of the ways to integrate automation tools in healthcare include;

• Online appointment booking
•  Automated reminders
  
  • Upcoming appointment
  • Medicine refill
  • Follow-up appointment
• Patient feedback

Electronic Health Records

As electronic systems have crept up into other aspects of our lives, it has also happened to healthcare. 

Patients want to avoid unnecessary trips to the healthcare provider and to have access to their medical records, including test results, diagnoses, and prescriptions.

Apart from improving patient experience and satisfaction, it also streamlines access and care provision at the healthcare provider’s end. 

Customer Relationship Management 

Using a CRM system streamlines patient engagement by managing and analyzing patient data interactions and their associated data in one place. 

Using a HIPAA-compliant CRM system can create a smooth patient experience by creating a smooth flow. 

It helps caregivers resolve patient issues, provide information, send timely communication, and even support marketing efforts. 

Implement Lessons Learned

Finally, you have the results of your patient journey map. You understand the pain points and all the areas causing unease or a less-than-satisfactory experience. 

It is time to revamp your system, be it your website, social media, technical, physical, or administrative aspects of your healthcare organization. 

Irrespective of how small or big the changes are, as long as they create ease for the patients, they are bound to bear fruit. 

On-Going Process

You never really stop updating your patient journey map once it is created.

Improvement is an ongoing process, you learn something new, and new tools and techniques emerge every day. 

Limiting yourself to a one-time mapping process would be losing out on great potential.

Continue to feed patient inputs, data, and feedback into your patient journey map and integrate a culture of continual improvement at your organization. 

Benefits of Patient Journey Mapping

Personalized Experience

Creating a patient journey map helps healthcare providers develop a deeper understanding of the patient's needs. 

That valuable piece of information can then be used to customize solutions around the issues and problems your patients face. 

A great way to do so is by integrating the collected data with business models and crafting personalized experiences instead of generic ones. 

Improved Patient Communication

Creating a genuinely representative patient journey means understanding what the patients go through during the entire care process.

Building on this input, better communication between the care provider and patient could be established. 

It could translate into addressing patient concerns more effectively, displaying empathy, and keeping them updated and informed about their condition and available options.

Another way a patient journey map could help is to identify communication gaps and help care providers offer more effective and efficient communication. 

Enhanced Aftercare 

The patient's journey does not necessarily end at the hospital. In many cases, it also includes recovery and ongoing care after the treatment concludes. 

These include patients going into recovery after a major treatment like surgery. Their aftercare could involve a combination of medications, therapies, and lifestyle changes. 

Developing thorough patient journey maps helps care providers assess the needs and challenges of the patient’s aftercare. 

Armed with this information they could develop aftercare help and options that facilitate the patient and result in better patient retention.

Elimination of Blind Spots

A patient journey map is a representation of the healthcare experience from the patient’s perspective, involving a great deal of research. 

Naturally, the research involves documentation of the patient's sentiments, pain points, and concerns. 

A patient journey map helps organizations identify the gaps in their services and offer opportunities to improve. 

Process Optimization

Having a patient journey map helps care providers streamline their entire care process.

It means all the care provision affairs run smoothly starting from initial communication, through the diagnosis and treatment, all the way to the end of treatment, and aftercare. 

Doing so will result in resource conservation, better health services including lesser patient wait time, and more value creation for the patient.

Reduce Wait Time for Patients

Patient journey mapping helps care providers optimize their processes and consequently streamline their services. 

One of the most important benefits of this streamlining is the reduced patient wait time. 

It directly affects the patients and results in less agony until they get the treatment. 

Patient Retention and Royalty

Patient journey mapping helps care providers offer better services curated to the individual needs of the patients, engage them better, improve services, and minimize inconveniences. 

All in all, it helps them create a better patient experience. 

Providing an enhanced patient experience is what ensures the patient keeps coming back to the same care provider. 

Eventually, it may get to the point where the patients refer the services of a care provider to their friends and family. 

Continuous Improvement

Understanding the patient's experiences through patient journey mapping involves developing a feedback mechanism for research purposes. 

Drawing on these inputs, the organization can implement continuous improvement of its processes and services to create better healthcare experiences. 

Conclusion

Patient journey mapping is a tool to visualize an ideal patient and involves information about what a patient goes through as they progress through their patient journey. 

Predominantly five types of journey maps are used for healthcare including mental, experience, customer journey, service blueprint, and spatial maps. 

The patient journey itself consists of the pre-visit stage where the customer gets awareness of a healthcare provider. 

Next up is the visit stage when they get a check-up, tests, diagnosis, and treatment. 

In the final post-visit stage they either continue follow-up visits to the care provider or recover at home or at the premises of the care provider. 

Several steps are involved in creating a patient journey map. The first of these is defining the goals and objectives of a patient journey map which involves setting out the problem that the map will help resolve. 

Next patient personas are created based on the extensive data collected about health issues, demographics, and service expectations of the patients. 

After these personas are narrowed down to the ones in focus, their touchpoints (interactions) with the care provider are mapped.

Each touchpoint is then assessed for its associated pain points, that is, areas where the healthcare experience fell short of the expectations. 

Finally, an inventory of the organization is created to list all the products, services, tools, and systems in place to serve the patients. 

A similar assessment is done about the tools, techniques, and systems that could help increase patient satisfaction.

Improvements are then devised and implemented to create an enhanced patient experience. 

Patient journey mapping happens to be an ongoing process where continuous research and patient feedback flow into the system for continual improvement. 

Creating these maps helps healthcare organizations identify their gaps, improve their services, offer custom healthcare, enhance aftercare and patient communication, increase patient satisfaction, and implement a culture of ongoing improvement. 

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