Successful Patient Journey Mapping: A How-To Guide

TL;DR

Patient journey mapping is the process of visually representing and analyzing the touchpoints and experiences patients have with a healthcare organization.

It helps enhance the overall patient experience and influences future healthcare decisions.

The patient journey can be broken down into four key steps: awareness, pre-visit, experience, and post-visit.

Patient journey mapping benefits include improved patient experience, increased patient engagement, and enhanced healthcare efficiency.

Creating a patient journey map involves identifying the target audience, collecting actionable data, creating personas, mapping the journey, analyzing pain points, and implementing improvements using conversational AI.

What Is Patient Journey Mapping?

Patient journey mapping refers to the process of visually representing and analyzing the various touchpoints and experiences that patients go through when interacting with a healthcare organization.

This mapping process is crucial for enhancing the overall patient experience.

In this step-by-step mini guide, we’ll outline the patient journey mapping process and provide you with tools to measure its success. Let’s dive right in, shall we?

Understanding Patients at Each Stage of Their Journey

Creating an effective patient journey map begins by cultivating profound and authentic empathy for your patients’ challenges.

A clear understanding of the patient journey enhances the often broken communication barrier between patients and healthcare providers.

Generally speaking, you can break down most patient journeys into four key steps:

Awareness: The awareness stage involves initial research, asking for recommendations, and deciding to seek professional help. It may begin when a patient chooses to obtain medical care.
Pre-visit: At this stage, the patient makes first contact with their chosen healthcare provider, often by scheduling an appointment online or visiting a healthcare facility. It also includes the registration process, filling out forms, and the initial interaction with healthcare staff.
Experience: This stage encompasses medical examinations, diagnostic tests, consultations with healthcare professionals, and formulating a treatment plan.
Post-visit: The final stage includes monitoring, recovery, rehabilitation, and ongoing care. It may also involve periodic check-ups and adjustments to the treatment plan as necessary.

How to Create a Patient Journey Map in 6 Easy Steps

Step 1: Identify and Segment Your Target Audience

Start by choosing the specific patient group or healthcare service you want to focus on. This could include patients with a particular condition or those undergoing a specific healthcare procedure.

Step 2: Collect Actionable Data

Gather relevant data about the chosen patient group’s experiences. You can collect this data using patient surveys, conversational intelligence, interviews, observations, and EHRs. Collect both quantitative and qualitative data to get the most comprehensive overview.

Step 3: Create Personas

Craft your patient personas based on the collected data. Personas help you empathize with and understand your patients better. The more you feel their pain, the more you can find the treatments and ultimately enhance the patient experience.

To create a persona, imagine your patient’s journey from the moment they wake up until the time they go to bed. Describe each step with details.

Step 4: Map the Patient Journey

Develop a visual representation of the patient’s journey. Start with the patient’s initial point of contact with the healthcare system and follow their path through various touchpoints, such as appointments, consultations, and follow-ups. Leverage the personas to illustrate different patient experiences.

Step 5: Analyze and Identify Pain Points

Carefully analyze the patient journey map to uncover areas where patients may encounter difficulties or frustrations. This could include getting lost on a poorly navigable website, having an app crash when it opens, or facing communication breakdowns.

Step 6: Implement Improvements using Conversational AI

Once you’ve pinpointed the pain points (literally), it’s time to begin implementing improvements. When a patient can automatically refill a prescription or book an appointment online without the friction of being placed on hold, they will be more inclined to share positive experiences and foster long-term loyalty to the healthcare provider.

Conversational AI can play a crucial role in driving these improvements. It can automate patient queries, streamline call routing, and provide 24/7 support to patients.

And there you have it. Six simple steps. Painless, right?

Next up, tracking relevant KPIs.

4 Valuable KPIs to Measure Patient Journey Mapping Success

Let’s take a closer look at the key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the success of your patient journey mapping strategies:

Patient Satisfaction Scores (PSAT): Use surveys and feedback forms to measure patient satisfaction both before and after implementing patient journey mapping.
Cost Savings: Measure the potential cost savings resulting from reduced repeat visits, shorter hospital stays, and decreased administrative overhead.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Evaluate whether patients are more likely to recommend your healthcare services to others because of the improved patient journey. This is particularly important for reaching Gen Z and millennial patients, who are active on social media and can substantially influence your brand’s reputation.
Patient Retention Rates: Analyze whether patients are more inclined to continue seeking care from your organization over the long term due to an enhanced patient journey experience.

By the way, when forecasting patient retention, consider that 36% of patients ditched their healthcare provider within the last two years.

Patient journey optimization can change all of that in an instant.

Wrapping Up

Mapping the patient journey can significantly improve healthcare services. It offers valuable insights into the patient experience, leading to increased patient satisfaction, more efficient and cost-effective healthcare delivery, and better health outcomes.

By utilizing Hyro’s Patient Journey Analytics, you can remove communication barriers and enhance the patient experience. By extracting rich conversational insights you can optimize every step of the patient’s journey, from their first interaction to the resolution of their healthcare needs.

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About the author

Ziv Gidron Head of Content, Hyro

Ziv is Hyro’s Head of Content, a conversational AI expert, and a passionate storyteller devoted to delivering his audiences with insights that matter when they matter most. When he’s not obsessively consuming or creating content on digital health and AI, you can find him rocking out to Fleetwood Mac with his four-year-old son.

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Successful Patient Journey Mapping: A How-To Guide

TL;DR

What Is Patient Journey Mapping?

Understanding Patients at Each Stage of Their Journey

How to Create a Patient Journey Map in 6 Easy Steps