Here are the top 7 things you need to know about Patient Journey Mapping
Patient Journey Mapping (PJM) is a relatively new concept that has been introduced to the healthcare industry. Borrowing on the principles of Customer Journey Management, PJM is a process in which all the interactions between patients the healthcare providers are ‘mapped out.
Patient Journey Mapping is a newly emerging concept in the healthcare industry. Borrowing from other industries and segments of markets, healthcare businesses have now started to realize that their patients are also their customers. This new insight and fundamental change in the relationship between patients and healthcare providers means that there is still a lot to be explored about PJM.
For medical professionals, especially healthcare professionals who run their own service, navigating the constant developments regarding PJM and its effects can quickly become difficult. To make it easier for healthcare professionals to catch up on the latest information about PJM, here are the top 7 things that they need to know about PJM.
1. Journey Mapping starts before a patient even visits
PJM is the visualization of all interactions between a patient and the healthcare service during the entirety of their care journey. This is why journey mapping for a patient starts even before they make their first visit. Journey mapping also continues after a visit has finished.
All of these areas are broadly be divided into three categories; pre-visit, visit, post-visit. Pre-visit touchpoints include all the interactions that a patient can have before making an actual visit to the healthcare facility. The visit portion of the journey includes when the patient is at the healthcare facility. The Post-visit touchpoints and processes are the bookend of a patient’s journey, and can often reinforce or mitigate both positive and negative patient experiences.
The post-visit touchpoints also suffer from the most lack of clarity over where the healthcare journey exactly ends, and healthcare professionals should ensure that they continue to communicate with their patients even if the visit itself has ended.
2. Journey Mapping in healthcare can be for patients’ families as well
Since a journey mapping process measures all the interactions between a particular ‘actor’ or ‘persona’, hospitals can also use the principles behind journey mapping to develop visualizations for other important ‘actors’ in the setting. Apart from patients, hospitals can also develop journey maps for caregivers and family members who often accompany patients on their healthcare journey.
While such individuals may often have a similar journey to the patients themselves, journey mapping allows healthcare professionals to recognize pain points and points of inflection of caregivers and family members.
This allows healthcare professionals to successfully tackle possible issues like White Coat Syndrome, waiting room anxiety, caregiver fatigue, etc.
Journey maps can also be made for the staff of healthcare facilities to make their experiences better as well, but that is a discussion for another time.
3. PJM leads to better patient customer service
By visualizing the touchpoints that a patient has during their care journey, healthcare providers can significantly improve their patient customer service. Healthcare providers are able to smoothen roadblocks and identify sticking points to reduce the friction that patients have during their healthcare journey.
By removing these points of friction, patients can have overall much better experiences and patient customer service improves as a result. Journey mapping is also potentially of paramount importance in several schools of medicine like palliative care, pediatric care, oncological treatments, and others where patient customer service is tantamount to the overall care quality.
4. PJM makes healthcare patient-centric
Over the past decades since the rise of institutional healthcare services, the healthcare industry has been focused on providing the service and not on who the service is provided. The entire goal of journey mapping is to create a patient-centric healthcare experience.
Medical journey mapping has been identified as one of the ways that healthcare can take a more holistic approach towards medicine and treatment, thus improving the outcomes and experiences for patients.
As is often the case in complex processes, rarely is one person or group of person is responsible for the entire process. In the case of healthcare, while many healthcare professionals are responsible for their sphere of duty in a patient’s care journey there may not be anyone who is responsible for that patient’s entire care journey.
PJM provides a holistic overview for this journey and allows a more cohesive journey for patients in the process.
Patient journey mapping, borrowing on the principles developed by customer journey mapping and user journey mapping by business and software developers, seeks to once again shift the healthcare landscape into one which is patient-centric.
5. PJM makes you realize that patients are customer
By shifting the focus to patients once more, the healthcare industry has begun to realize that most patients today are not the passive patients of the past century but active consumers who want a say in their care journeys.
Legal statutes and measures have also begun to increasingly take the same view since the turn of the century, with patients having many more recourses against healthcare providers if they are left unsatisfied with the services they have received.
PJM reinforces the fact that patients, and their families and caregivers, want optimal service just like any other customer.
6. Research has shown PJM works
It has been evidenced by recent and past research, that patients report much higher outcome measures as well as satisfaction with their healthcare experience when healthcare providers are using mapping techniques. This increases their overall satisfaction, which is a critical metric for healthcare providers.
The body of research around PJM is growing every day, as more studies find out the many and varied benefits that mapping exercises can have on the entire healthcare industry.
7. PJM highlights hidden opportunities for improvement
The introduction of healthcare KPIs (key performance indicators) to assess the quality of care given to patients can also show hidden areas that can be improved. For example, the ‘visit’ portion of the patient journey has been noted as an area of improvement when noted through the performance lens of a mapping exercise.
Other emerging technologies like AI, data analytics, and big data will significantly ease the pressure of mapping patient healthcare journeys. This would further allow healthcare providers to find areas that can be improved upon.
BraveLabs is working with healthcare providers across the country to provide many more such insights. With our expertise, your healthcare facilities can easily implement patient journey mapping.
