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Patient Journey Mapping

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Patient Journey Map tracks the entire journey that a patient goes through when they are in a healthcare facility. It outlines all the touchpoints during the time a patient interacts with the healthcare system pre-visit, visit, and post-visit. It helps in developing strategies that may improve a patient’s experience, satisfaction, and engagement with the system.

A patient journey map gives the patient’s experience during their journey a visual flow. When you map a Patient Journey, it defines the stages of care a patient goes through. It starts from the awareness of symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, post-treatment, and recovery.

A well-crafted patient journey map is exhaustive and extensive. It helps the healthcare providers see through the patient’s point of view. The map makes it easy for them to identify any pain points experienced by the patients and gives them the opportunities to find solutions for such issues.

Patient satisfaction surveys are surveys that collect feedback from patients in order to measure their satisfaction with the quality of service and care of their healthcare service provider. These surveys help healthcare providers identify ways in which they can improve their practice. When better care is delivered, patients are happier and are likely to indicate this satisfaction on future surveys.

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Why is the Patient Journey Map important?

Understanding the patient and their feelings is an important step for the healthcare providers to ensure that the patients are well served. Patient Journey Mapping helps to understand the patient experience through each stage in their interaction with the system. It helps expose the gaps and blind spots in the system.

Understanding patient experience further helps understand their needs. This helps the healthcare providers develop personalized and improved patient experiences. It improves the communication between patients and providers and reduces uncertainties.

Communication with the patients and insights from the patients are valuable knowledge for the healthcare system. The facility can make decisions that benefit the patients by improving the quality of care provided. It brings forth opportunities for improving retention and ensures long-term relationships with patients.

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Touchpoints in Patient Journey Mapping

The touchpoint in the Patient journey map is divided into three parts, these are:

Pre-visit: The journey that starts before a patient arrives at the healthcare facility. This involves the step where they book an appointment, choose their service, and reserve their place.

  • Finding the service
  • Booking an appointment
  • Submitting medical records (current medication, allergies, other docs. relevant to medical history)

Visit: This touchpoint involves the arrival of the patient followed by checking-in, waiting, and the actual treatment.

This begins when the patient checks in through a self-service kiosk. They can also check-in through reception where a hospital staff assists them.

After check-in, a patient is out into the waiting queue. Virtual queuing allows the patient to wait remotely for their turn. It also allows the facility to update the patient on how long they have to wait until their treatment. This also assures the patient that they will be constantly updated on what to expect.

This touchpoint also includes the treatment, when the patient is seen and treated by the medical expert. The patient receives their treatment based on their diagnosis and their medical history.

Post-visit: This touchpoint is the treatment that a patient receives at the end of their journey. It is centered on collecting patient feedback about the quality of care, experience, satisfaction, etc. from the patient’s perspective. This ultimately leads to patient retention.

  • Post-treatment instructions
  • Discharge from hospital
  • Patient feedback survey
  • Post-treatment communication

Patient care cannot be limited to assumptions. Patient feedback is important to make decisions and learn the truth about the quality of care provided by the facility. This makes the first-hand experience of the patients a valuable insight for the facility.

Patient Journey Mapping1
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What are the stages of Patient Journey Mapping?

While the touchpoints give an overview of the patient journey, the stages explain the more intricate level of what a patient engages with during their time in the facility.

Awareness:

The first step is when the patient discovers their symptom and researches their medical condition. It is at this step that the patient should land on your website. The patients will start researching your website and look through the client experiences regarding the services you provide.

Your Website/application should be optimized so that it is easily discoverable. It should be at the top of the SEO game so that patients can find it the moment they search for healthcare services. The website should also be easy to access and navigate through. The contents should be well updated so that they find no trouble to find your contact information.

Diagnosis:

The patient needs to be properly diagnosed to figure out their medical condition. In this stage, the patient books an appointment with the doctor for a preliminary checkup. It involves tests and because the doctor needs to review the results, so it may take some time before determining the condition.

The software you use should have the proper features to make it easy for the patient to schedule appointments through the website/app. It should streamline communication between the patient and the healthcare providers. The patients should be able to exchange information with the medical specialist through the communication channels, be it via chat, audio, or video call.

Treatment:

After figuring out the medical condition of the patient they move on to the treatment. Depending on the seriousness of the condition the patient may have to stay in the hospital and receive treatment. Or, they may also receive home treatment instead. This step is crucial for the health benefit of the patient. The patient is kept under constant observation to monitor how they are responding to the treatment. Thus, this step involves care optimization.

For the patients who receive home care, they need to be in constant communication with their doctor. Your website/app needs to be equipped properly so that the patients can share their health data with the doctor.

Post-treatment:

This stage of Patient Journey Mapping is often overlooked by the healthcare facility. However, it is important for the healthcare facility to follow up with the patient after their treatment even when the treatment went well. You need to monitor the post-treatment care and continue to interact with the patient.

Using CRM can benefit the facility. The care providers will receive reminders to contact the patients at the right time and keep tabs on them.

Recovery:

After their treatment, the patients need to learn to live with their now-normal condition. This is also a part of the post-treatment stage. The care providers must continue to keep in touch with the patient and help them accustom to the new lifestyle. They must guide the patient through the changes in their routine and towards the path of healing.

You cannot neglect this stage because it ensures the patient’s long-term wellbeing and reduces the chance of readmission.

The tools you use are the same as the ones you use to communicate with the patients before. You can continue to monitor the patient with the remote patient monitoring app and remind them of their new routine.

At the end of the Patient Journey, it is essential to gather feedback from the patients. The feedback will help you see the patient’s experience through their eyes. It will give you knowledge about their experience and satisfaction to improve the quality of the entire process and the care provided. Ultimately leading to improved Patient Journey Mapping.

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Stakeholders in Patient Journey

The stakeholders involved in the Patient Journey include internal and external factors:

People: Patient, Families, Care providers, Staff members, etc.

Technology: Website, Mobile App, Social Media, Treatment Updates, Online appointment, and registration, etc.

Facility: Hospital or healthcare campus, Parking, and Building accessibility

As mentioned, technology plays an important role in connecting patients to the appropriate healthcare service. It thus plays a major role in the patient journey.

However, the facility also leaves an impression on the patient experience. Availability of parking space, accessibility of services in the building, cleanliness, etc. ensure that the patient has a smooth experience and faces no issue during their stay.

A Patient Journey Map also includes people other than the patients themselves; they are the care providers and staff. It is also important to record their perspective when creating a patient journey map. A story from the perspective of patients alone can be one-sided. Thus, multiple perspectives can provide an all-rounded view and enrich the patient’s journey.

Patient Journey Mapping cvr

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Benefits of Patient Journey Mapping

A Patient Journey Mapping exposes the gaps in the entire system, whether it is the procedure of patient booking an appointment or any issue with the care provided by the facility. It uncovers the truth about the potential issues that may lead to negative experiences and leave a negative impression on the patient.

Therefore, patient journey mapping identifies these blind spots so that the care providers can find solutions. This implies that it creates a seamless patient journey.

A Patient Journey Map helps in improving communication between the patients and the care providers. Communication is important to keep the care providers up-to-date about the health condition of the patients. A patient journey mapping can help identify any red flags, such as inconsistent communication or uncertainties. Transparent communication between the patient and doctor can improve the patient’s experience.

A Patient Journey Map can help you understand the issues faced by patients to seek proper care. Patients are mostly unaware of the connection between symptoms and their medical condition. A patient journey can show you the struggles patients go through when seeking a diagnosis. You can thus, educate the patients on their medical condition.

Patient Journey Map can find ways to support patients post-treatment. After receiving treatment the patient has to live with a new condition. Restrictions, diet, pills, etc. all become a part of a new lifestyle. Monitoring how patients manage their post-treatment life can help you discover ways to improve long-term wellbeing. You may discover products or services that can benefit the patient.

A patient journey map can also streamline the workflow of the care providers. Keeping tabs on the patient can help them be prepared for any potential problems. The journey map can optimize the workflow and guide the care providers and other employees through the entire process. As a result of streamlined workflow, the efficiency in the patient journey also increases.

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How can you map a Patient Journey?

  • Talk to clinicians to create a map involving the steps in a treatment given to a patient. The outline can be used to build patient experience.
  • Gather information about the experience in the patient journey regarding the treatment. Also, learn what the patients want to achieve at the end of their journey with the facility.
  • Monitor, track, and highlight the different paths taken by patients when they interact with the healthcare system.
  • Identify any blind spots in the patient journey map along with any issues faced by patients. Develop solutions for the issues and gaps in the system.
  • Update the patient journey maps regularly with the feedback you receive. The new data improves the system and the care quality, ultimately improving patient experience.

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Steps to create Patient Journey Map

Understand your Patients

It is important to see the entire process from the patient’s point of view. To do this you can create a patient persona with all the details you have about your patient.

  • Needs
  • Preferred communication channel
  • Objective

While you cannot do this with all the patients, however, establishing patient personas with similar characteristics can help you understand the feeling of the patient.

Patient Activation

Make sure your website/app provides various communication channels for the patient to interact with you. Some may prefer phone calls while others may prefer chats.

Ensure that your software is optimized to record all the interaction the patient has with the facility. Also, the information should be distributed among all appropriate care providers and employees.

Also, provide the patient with all necessary information before scheduling their visit to the facility.

Fully armed healthcare facility

Everyone in the facility should be fully prepared for the patient. The information gathered by the reception should be in the system. The patient should not need to repeat anything. Make sure you gather all necessary documents like insurance, consent, etc. before the patient visits.

Interaction with patient

This step involves the engagement the patient has with the healthcare system. As the interaction continues you will discover the pain points in your healthcare system.

  • How easy is the procedure for check-in and check-out?
  • Are you meeting your patient’s expectations?
  • Is it easy for the patient to make future appointments?

Patient retention

At the very end is patient retention. Spend time and effort on this part of the journey to ensure that your healthcare facility stands apart from others. This step tells you what your strengths are that makes the patients seek help from you in the future.

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Why is Voxco your ideal partner for Patient Journey Mapping?

Voxco delivers Patient-centric care along with healthcare surveys. It helps you understand what your patient needs, and identify opportunities to improve care quality.

With its Omnichannel healthcare solution, Voxco can manage both mandatory HCAHPS and non-HCAHPS surveys. You can create engaging multilingual non-HCAHPS web surveys. Get real-time response, track patient metrics.

Using Voxco mobile offline you can seamlessly pair web surveys with in-hospital and face-to-face surveys.

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FAQs on Patient Journey Mapping Surveys

A Patient-centric journey map focuses on capturing a patient’s experience. It strives to monitor and record the patient’s condition and their experience when interacting with the healthcare facility.

By building a Patient Journey Map you can identify the gaps in your healthcare system and figure out solutions to close the gaps. It helps in establishing a proactive healthcare system that helps the patient live a healthy life as long as possible after treatment.

A Patient Experience in healthcare involves their overall interaction with the healthcare facility. It includes the care from doctors, nurses, hospital staff, physicians, etc.

Voxco is an Omnichannel solution that integrates phone, web, and face-to-face healthcare surveys, thus maximizing your chances of reaching patients. Outreach calls, welcome calls, patient satisfaction, and home health agency surveys with the TCPA compliant Voxco Dialer makes it the most competent provider for the healthcare system.

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