What is a patient journey?
The patient journey is the healthcare journey that begins when a person perceives a need for healthcare and reaches out to a healthcare provider. It ends with the patient healing or transferring onwards in the healthcare system.
Why is having an optimal patient journey important?
Focusing on providing an optimal patient journey is important because:
– Attract healthcare consumers
It influences how many patients will come to your facility for healthcare. Patients are healthcare consumers who research their illnesses and assess the healthcare provider’s reputation before choosing. 87% of healthcare consumers say reputation influences how they choose a facility.
– Improve patient care
Meeting each patient’s unique needs improves each patient engagement journey and loyalty. By creating patient personas, providers understand how to engage patients effectively. Better patient participation impacts the care provided.
– Record more successful patient outcomes
The patient experience journey should include better doctor-patient interaction, leading to better adherence to treatment plans and positively influencing patient outcomes.
– Reduce expenses for healthcare providers
An efficient, well-planned patient journey can reduce the expense and time it takes to reach the diagnosis, for example, by avoiding unnecessary testing, An optimum healthcare journey also reduces the length of stay in the hospital and ends with a faster discharge process, which significantly reduces costs for the healthcare provider.
– Have better patient-practitioner interactions
Patients who interact with their care provider on a consistent basis cost the healthcare system one-third less. Regular communication and providing reminders and resources, such as evidenced-based training courses for patients, supports patient-centered health and patient engagement.
– Be safely staffed
Healthcare facilities that provide optimum patient care are always safely staffed. This promotes improved patient safety and clinical risk management. Safe staffing is part of transparency in healthcare which includes maintaining transparent, financially sustainable staffing practices that directly impact the patient journey.
– Better healthcare facility reputation
Patients who are satisfied with the patient journey are more likely to recommend the facility and leave positive reviews online. Optimum journeys are one of the key factors in boosting patient satisfaction scores and boosting public relations.
Typical patient pain points
Patients evaluate potential pain points and look for a facility that answers their needs. NRC Market insights identify some patient pain points:
- reliable recommendations (important to 62% of healthcare consumers)
- cost (important to 72% of healthcare consumers)
- insurance coverage (important to 88% of healthcare consumers)
- convenience (important to 77% of healthcare consumers) and
- a positive prior experience (important to 80% of healthcare consumers)
Healthcare facilities should show patients they can resolve or ease the pain points to the patient’s benefit.
Barriers to a good patient journey
“Patient journey analysis” helps healthcare providers understand how patients interact with providers throughout the patient journey. Healthcare facilities can improve the aspects they have an influence on. Some of these points are:
- Patient anxiety about their recovery as they travel through the healthcare system
- Lack of patient education about the healthcare system or health issues
- The absence of patient control over healthcare options (personalization) in healthcare due to a lack of electronic health records (EHRs) and the resultant lack of knowledge for the healthcare facility and the patient, patient communication preferences, and interoperability between medical facilities for the patient’s convenience.
- Not being technologically up to date with the latest MedTech developments or not having staff that are trained to operate this technology.
- Misguided budgeting attempts by the healthcare facility to reduce costs and increase profit at the expense of satisfying patient pain points.
- Ineffective nurse communication and inefficient patient handoff and the resultant potential for medical errors
- Patient admission and discharge processes that are below patient expectations
- Understaffed shifts and no call no show employees negatively impact the patient’s journey through unavoidable medical inefficiency.
- Overworked nurses who suffer from emotional burnout and cannot contribute to improving the patient journey.
Healthcare providers can respond to many of these issues by understanding the patient’s point of view. Building a healthcare journey map can strengthen patient interaction with healthcare providers, thereby retaining patients.
What is patient journey mapping?
Patient journey mapping means creating a visual rendition of the patient experience that a patient can expect within a healthcare facility. Patient journey mapping helps healthcare stakeholders understand the entire patient experience. It is one of the key solutions for improving the entire patient journey. This information is used:
- to improve procedures in healthcare facilities,
- improve the weak points, and
- portray healthcare as a consumer journey.
Patient journey market research is based on general consumer marketing strategies, so it promotes communication between providers, professionals, and patients. This is appropriate since healthcare consumers expect more from healthcare providers. A healthcare customer journey map enables healthcare professionals to understand what patients expect.
4 keys to a better patient journey
Here are solutions or suggestions that healthcare facilities can take on board to improve the patient healthcare journey:
1. Understand who the stakeholders are
The Mayo Clinic has a dedicated Office of Mayo Clinic Experience. In 2017, improving patient satisfaction became a focal point. Working with a satisfaction measurement service, they revealed that the patient journey includes the patient, their family, and the healthcare staff. Understanding that the patient journey affects and is affected by these various stakeholders allowed them to create more effective healthcare journey strategies.
2. Adopt or improve the patient journey mapping process
There are online patient journey mapping templates. However, it is probably best to partner with a dedicated professional for mapping the patient journey in a specific healthcare facility since no two are the same. A patient journey map might include the following:
- stages in the patient journey – called touchpoints
- expected customer actions
- patient experience
- patient pain points and concerns
- potential solutions to investigate.
3. Enable personalized patient experiences
Personalization in healthcare services is very broad. Personalization gives healthcare consumers choice and control over the way their healthcare will be delivered. Personalization can include
- Communication – for example, communicate in ways patients prefer, communicate relevant educational information, and give patients appointment reminders.
- Including the patient in medical decisions.
- Allow patients to choose where they receive care.
- Consider the patient’s budget when offering a choice of care providers.
- Provide printed or written information upon discharge. The Nursing Times reports that 40% of surveyed patients leave the hospital without instructions about what to do after discharge.
4. Have a safely staffed facility
In a survey, only 58% of patients responded that there were enough nurses on duty. Patient confidence in healthcare staff reflects staffing levels. Healthcare organizations should ensure:
- Every healthcare facility meets safe staffing levels required for healthcare compliance
- Every shift in every department is staffed with nurses who are fully qualified to meet patients’ needs and can answer patients’ questions
- Staffing and scheduling of nurses is organized and planned in advance so that nurses know their schedules and are accountable for them
- Nurse staffing actively supports the patient journey. When patient journey touchpoints involve nurses, nurses truly have the knowledge, tools, and authority to facilitate shorter and more effective patient stays and reduce patient readmissions.
How Dropstat can partner in improving the patient journey
Dropstat is a top-of-the-line AI-powered safe-staffing app. Dropstat understands that having enough staff in every shift is the cornerstone to achieving patient satisfaction and an optimal patient journey. Safe staffing means that all required nurses come in for their shifts on time, every time. Dropstat’s app is accessible to all nursing staff, and nurses see their schedules clearly, increasing nurse accountability and still enabling nurses’ peace of mind since they know when they will be working. Nurse schedulers have the tools they need to be in contact with nurses and nurse managers at all times to update schedules, if necessary, transparently and efficiently via a secure, internal, encrypted messaging system.
Schedule a demo with Dropstat to see how partnering with Dropstat can help you build a better patient journey.
