How to Improve the Patient Journey: 5 Tips for Facilities

Healthcare administrators understand the importance of improving the patient experience to optimize health outcomes and patient satisfaction. However, efforts that focus on singular moments of each patient’s stay often ignore the chronology of the various healthcare experiences that make up the patient journey.

Facilities can get a sense of how a patient feels about their collective time in the healthcare setting by focusing on their journey. Mapping a patient’s experiences — from the moment they search for a care provider to their discharge home from treatment — provides a systematic approach to optimizing patient engagement.

How does a patient’s journey affect their wellbeing and overall satisfaction? We’ll give a brief introduction to the topic and provide five tips to help improve care and satisfaction scores at your facility.

What Is a Patient Journey?

In hospitals and other care facilities, a patient’s journey represents the overall experience with the healthcare organization. For a single healthcare interaction, all of the following patient experiences are examples of elements included in this healthcare journey:

• Symptom recognition and awareness of need for care
• Searching the internet for healthcare providers
• Appointment scheduling and reminders
• First interactions with the medical facility (parking, lobby, and information desk)
• Intake and admission
• Physician diagnosis and care recommendations
• Treatment and discharge
• Follow-up care and proactive health maintenance strategies

These experiences are often tracked using patient journey mapping. This is a process in which healthcare stakeholders create a visual timeline representing all of a patient’s interactions with a facility. We’ll go into more detail about what this entails later on, but let’s first discuss what key phases make up this timeline.

What Are the Phases of a Patient Journey?

By organizing the elements listed above into three distinct healthcare phases, facility administrators can streamline initiatives to improve patient wellness.

When gathering patient feedback, you should make sure to capture insights at each of these stages. To provide clarity, we’ll go over an example of a healthcare journey for a patient named Marcus.

Pre-visit

Marcus collides with a friend at soccer practice and injures his leg. He knows he needs to receive care, but isn’t sure where to go. Luckily, his insurance card lists phone numbers to call in emergencies and he decides to call the facility in his region.

Takeaways: Marketing and brand presence help keep your healthcare organization in the minds of potential patients. Distribute cards with phone numbers or facility addresses to guide patients to your facility the moment they need care. Hosting events in the community is another way to remind patients of the services you provide before they need them.

Visit

The telephone operator instructs Marcus to go to the emergency department five miles from his current location. She informs him that the current wait time is approximately one hour.

A friend drops Marcus off at the valet, and the hospital steward helps him into the lobby. He checks in at the front desk, and takes a seat in the waiting room to fill out paperwork.

An hour later, Marcus is called back for treatment by the emergency room nurse. She collects his vitals, assesses for pain, and transports Marcus to and from the radiology department. The orthopedic doctor then informs Marcus that he has a sprained knee and will need physical therapy for four months to restrengthen the tendons around the joint. Marcus schedules his first therapy appointment and, over the next four months, attends weekly sessions after receiving appointment reminders from the healthcare facility.

Takeaways: Providing information like wait times and copay fees over the phone can be helpful for preparing patients for what to expect once they arrive at your facility. Additionally, provider and assistive personnel presence can help welcome a patient to your facility and provide them with comfort as they wait for and receive care.

Discharge planning provides a great opportunity for facilities to close out a positive patient journey and transition to disease management and prevention. Scheduling follow-up appointments prior to leaving the hospital sets expectations and helps bridge the patient care continuum within your organization.

Post-visit

Months after his initial injury, Marcus has completed his therapy treatments and is pain-free. He continues to wear the knee brace that his physical therapist provided and performs exercises to strengthen his muscles and ligaments. He has a routine physical appointment scheduled in two months and is looking forward to learning more about ways to improve his health.

Takeaways: Healthcare companies strive to encourage wellness in their patients well after treatment ends. By providing patients with the equipment and support they need to re-enter the community, facilities can ensure better health outcomes and satisfaction scores. Follow-up phone calls can help facilities make sure patients are on the right track.

Healthcare patients are like other consumers: if they have good experiences with care from your facility, they are likely to return the next time they need medical treatment. Facilities that set patients up for success can build trust and loyalty.

Marcus’ story demonstrates the many channels and touchpoints of a patient journey. Examples like these show how administrative clerks, clinical personnel, and elements of facility design all play a part in improving a patient’s healthcare experience.

5 Key Strategies to Improve Patient Healthcare Journeys

Now that you understand the elements of the healthcare journey, you’re probably wondering how to improve the overall experience for your patients. Here are five strategies for enhancing a patient’s journey to improve health outcomes, build strong patient-provider relationships, and save your facility money.

1. Periodically Collect Healthcare Journey Feedback

A patient’s journey is made up of many point-in-time experiences. Facilities can address overarching patient needs and preferences by collecting healthcare journey feedback at each step. Routinely scheduling surveys, discussion groups, and patient shadowing experiences can help facilities ensure quality care and find areas of improvement as patients move from one point in the journey to the next.

2. Enhance Patient Journey Visualization

When assessing patient-specific data, it’s helpful to visualize metrics and trends. Working with your hospital’s analytics department to conduct patient journey mapping is one way to uncover patient perceptions and establish care goals.

Journey mapping can help visualize all of the interactions a patient would have with the healthcare system before, during, and after receiving care. A journey map uses data from the patient’s perspective to construct a visual timeline to show the relationship between the patient and the healthcare organization over time.

Journey mapping uses data graphics to tell the patient’s story. Similar to collecting survey feedback, facilities can use this journey map to find opportunities for improvement and develop unique solutions for the needs of their patients.

3. Improve Digital Communication Platforms

Facilities often develop value-based care initiatives to improve quality of care and optimize Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement. One way facilities can ensure federal funding is to improve digital communication strategies.

Technological advancements require hospitals to adjust the way they reach out to patients. Developing high-quality digital communication platforms can help facilities connect with the individuals they serve.

Facilities can save time and money by prioritizing preventative care and preventing missed appointments. Email reminders, synchronized online calendar appointments, and electronic health record (EHR) app notifications are a few ways to cut down on gaps in facility schedules.

4. Build Your Facility’s Brand Image

As with other consumer businesses, a healthcare company’s brand image should represent their vision and values. Studies show that a well-marketed hospital brand image positively impacts the healthcare journey and improves patient loyalty.

Consistent branding across locations and online platforms can help build trust and differentiate your facility from competitors. A healthcare organization can market its brand through facility design, product purchasing, and staff education.

5. Create a Patient-Centered Workplace Culture

Healthcare staff can create unique and personalized patient experiences to improve patient healthcare journeys. Healthcare employees who are patient-centered aren’t just focused on their single interaction with the patient, but on ensuring that the patient has a smooth handoff to their next provider or step in their journey.

You can help your staff to develop a culture of respect and compassion for patients by:

• Participating in active listening during patient encounters.
• Calling patients by name, and documenting preferred pronouns in the patient’s medical record.
• Encouraging clinical questioning and quality improvement research among staff, not a culture of blame as this leads to solutions which ultimately benefit patients.

Find More Ways to Improve Healthcare Journeys and Provide High-Quality Care

Understanding the importance of visualizing and improving the patient journey can help your facility to stand out among the rest. Don’t miss out on more of our expert insights, including additional ways to encourage patient engagement and improve care at your facility.