How To Create a Complete Patient Journey in 9 Steps

In the United States, more than 304 million people have health insurance. Those people, along with many uninsured and undocumented, use the healthcare system to keep themselves and their families healthy.

Every type of patient has their own journey, complete with unique touchpoints, pain points, and experiences. As a business owner, creating a patient journey map is necessary to understand what patients go through, how healthcare providers can improve patient satisfaction and patient engagement, and what to do to improve the overall patient experience.

The Patient’s Journey: Making a Patient Journey Map

When a patient needs care, their journey begins. A patient journey map is a map that considers all the parts of a patient’s healthcare journey, whether that includes calling a medical office to get scheduled, waiting for insurance clearance, or paying the final bill for treatment.

What does a common patient journey map look like?

A patient journey map is a diagram that tracks a patient’s interactions with their healthcare providers. The five segments you’ll find on most patient journey maps include awareness, consideration, access, service delivery, and ongoing care. Within each of those segments, there are additional sections, such as community events or outreach, which dictate what a patient might experience throughout their time with a specific healthcare provider.

What is a patient journey map?

Looking more deeply into a patient journey map, it can be broken down into several segments and stages that may vary depending on the kind of map you use. Some of the stages you’ll want to include are listed below.

Stages of the Patient Journey Map

Awareness

Awareness is the first stage of the patient journey. During this stage, the patient is learning about the healthcare provider. They may have their first touchpoint when they send an email or call the provider directly. Common ways patients become aware of healthcare clinics and facilities are through community events, quality and reputation management by the provider, marketing campaigns, or contracting and networks.

Consideration

During the consideration stage, the patient is thinking about whether they’d like to see this provider or not. They may have to consider their coverage and benefits, think about the referrals they have (or don’t), and search for a provider in their network. They likely also have to set up a profile within their insurance network or a new provider’s healthcare portal on the backend.

Access

Access is the stage during which the patient gets to schedule with the provider. They may get an official patient portal account now, and they may speak with call center representatives who collect patient information at this time. The healthcare facility may perform new patient outreach, too. As a part of the patient journey, this stage may also include pricing and pricing transparency, which will allow them to see what they can expect to spend with the provider.

Service Delivery

Service delivery is the stage when patients receive care. They will interact with their chosen healthcare professionals, such as registered nurses or doctors. They will also be discharged and billed accordingly.

Ongoing Care

Finally, there is the ongoing care segment. During this part of the patient journey, the healthcare community may have additional touchpoints to keep the patient connected, such as care management, Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), or others.

5 Benefits of the Patient Journey Map

Learning about the patient journey helps you understand what your clients go through and how to serve them better. There are benefits of creating a patient journey map, some of which include:

Taking Ownership

The patient experience isn’t out of your control. Creating a patient journey map gives you power. With it, you see how you can make changes and take ownership of the pain points you discover.

Listening to Patients

You will find the parts of the patient journey you need to pay more attention to when you use a patient journey map. You can refine how often you should be reaching out to patients, \to keep up with their feedback.

Solidifying Your Understanding of the Patient Journey

Everyone in your organization should understand what patients experience when they choose to work with you. Getting aligned on the ideal patient journey and experience ensures everyone is on the same page.

Measuring Gaps in Service

By aligning your organization, you’ll more easily see where the patient is running into pain points along their path. Knowing what the ideal, intended experience is and recognizing when it falls short lets you improve your processes.

Making Healthcare Less Painful for Patients

Once you know the pain points that come up most often for your patients, you can take action to resolve them. Whether it’s long wait times or billing concerns, addressing patient concerns early and often helps your organization improve its reputation and perfect the patient experience.

The 4 Different Types of Patient Journey Maps

There are different kinds of patient journey maps. Some of them can be used to see how patients feel. Others are used to find out more about what they do during their journey, and some explore the way your organization is impacted as a result. You can start with a basic patient journey map and expand into one or more of these as necessary for your organization’s data analysis needs.

Current State

Current state journey maps tell you the emotions patients have when they interact with your business. The pros of this kind of map are that it uses observed and collected patient data. A con is that it shows only a snapshot in time, so you need to create a new map regularly.

Future State

The future state journey map is predictive. It describes what you want your patients to think, feel, or do when they have a relationship with your organization. The pros of this kind of map are that it allows for forward-thinking, so you can align your teams and create a strategy. The con is that it is predictive, even if created with past data in mind.

Day-in-the-Life

A day-in-the-life map focuses on a patient’s daily interactions. You’ll ask, “What are patients feeling or doing today?” The pro of this kind of map is that it allows you to create patient personas and consider factors outside your organization that could be influencing patient preferences or pain points. As for negatives, it really is a snapshot of one patient’s persona. It’s only a close look at what some people might go through, not all.

Service Blueprint

The service blueprint is designed to show more than just the current or future patient journeys. It also goes into your own organization’s processes or policies, so you can see pain points, touchpoints, and other factors that influence the patient experience overall. As a downside, this type of map isn’t focused on the patient as much as it is on your own organization’s processes, so keep that in mind.

How To Create a Patient Journey Map

Creating a patient journey map gives you a better look at what patients go through when they learn about or decide to use your services. To create a patient journey map:

Define Your Target Audience

To start with, it’s necessary to define your target audience. Which patient personas will you include on the patient journey map? You may choose based on demographics or age, for example, to create a more accurate map of the audience.

Identify Patient Touchpoints

The next step is to identify patient touchpoints. Touchpoints might include a call with the front office at a doctor’s office or when a bill is sent to the patient after services are rendered.

Establish Concrete Goals

Next, you need to establish concrete goals for your patient journey map. What are you hoping to accomplish by creating a patient journey map? Determine this to choose the kind of map you want to create.

Identify the Patient’s Steps To Accomplish Their Target Goal

You should also identify the patient’s goals. Ask yourself what steps they will need to complete to reach their goals. These steps might include calling the office, scheduling a procedure, or others.

Map Out Your Journey Stages

After you identify the patient’s goals, you can map out the journey stages mentioned above. These include:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Access
• Service delivery
• Ongoing care

Analyze Patient Pain Points and Behaviors

After mapping out the stages of the patient journey, consider any pain points patients may run into and the behaviors they result in.

For example, patients may get stuck on a long hold while calling the office. If they do, they could hang up and try a different provider instead due to frustration.

Develop an Action Plan

By identifying pain points, you can correct them for a better patient experience. The correction you decide on is a part of your action plan. Healthcare organizations can make the patient journey easier by regularly reviewing pain points and developing an action plan with solutions to resolve anything holding patients back.

Uncover Perceptions Along the Journey

Look for perceptions in the patient journey. Perceptions patients have about your healthcare organization can give you much-needed insight into what keeps patients loyal versus what encourages them to look for other healthcare service providers.

Analyze and Restructure if Needed

Finally, review the customer journey map to determine if you need to restructure any part of your services. If you identify areas in need of support, put your action plan to work. That action plan may not completely resolve problems with the patient experience, but it will improve it. Continue to analyze patient feedback and restructure your action plan accordingly.

3 Patient Journey Map Examples

There are several kinds of patient journey maps. Here are three:

Current State Maps

Current state maps look at how a customer feels today. It’s a simple map to make. It includes five phases and covers the customer’s thoughts, feelings, actions, and touchpoints. It also goes over proposed changes to improve the patient journey.

Day-in-the-Life Maps

Day-in-the-life maps look closely at a patient’s day, whether it is within or outside of the healthcare community. To make this map, think of everything your customers will do from the time they wake up until they go to sleep, including interacting with or using your products and services.

Service Blueprint Maps

Service Blueprint Maps are within the realm of patient journey maps, but they look at backend processes instead of everything the patient experiences. Generally, this kind of map will include information on how the organization is run, which includes frontstage, client-facing elements, backstage elements, and support processes.

No matter what kind of patient journey map you use, it will help you identify touchpoints, pain points, and other factors that can affect patient satisfaction and patient engagement with your healthcare system.

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