Improving The Patient Journey

Many healthcare organizations believe that a patient’s journey ends at hospital discharge or the end of their in-patient care. However, that mindset could reduce patient retention and decrease their revenue in the long run. It also can have a serious impact on patient satisfaction. After all, patients still need care after they’ve been discharged from the hospital. They may have medications to inquire about, billing questions, recovery techniques to ask their care team about, and more. How do they ask those questions? Well, most of the time – they call their healthcare provider. Improving healthcare patient communication is just one method of seriously improving the patient journey.

Understanding the patient journey and how it works for both your patients and your organization is just the beginning when optimizing patient satisfaction in healthcare. The patient journey doesn’t begin when they show up at your healthcare organization. It actually starts far beyond that, which is why it’s important to invest in digital tools that support a patient’s journey before they arrive. However, it is common for every healthcare organization to have a slightly different patient journey. Healthcare organizations can use digital tools such as Authenticx to create specific patient journey maps so that they know exactly when and how patients are arriving at their current step. Healthcare organizations can use these insights to create a touchpoint map for patients and improve patient empowerment through timely information. That way, a patient is never in the dark about what should come next. Understanding, mapping, and creating an intentional patient journey is also an example of healthcare patient engagement tactics. 

Patient satisfaction, engagement, and retention all have a common theme: patient trust. A 2017 survey published by Plos One found that patients who trust their healthcare staff have better perceptions about the quality of care they receive. Patients who have higher levels of trust also have a higher level of patient satisfaction. So what are the ways in which trust can be obtained to reach patient satisfaction? 

One of the key foundations for getting patients to trust your healthcare organization is by understanding them. One of the best ways to understand them is to listen to them. Listening to patients goes beyond reading notes left behind in charts – patients are speaking to healthcare providers every day through the phone, and yet that data is often left ignored. Authenticx provides a way for healthcare providers to listen to their customers and learn from their conversations using natural language processing AI. 

Patient Journey Meaning

The patient journey can be segmented into three different sections: pre-visit, the visit, and post-visit. Many smaller patient journey touchpoints occur under the umbrella of those three segments. This is where customization should happen in a patient journey, meaning that healthcare organizations should examine their specific practices and how that can have an impact on patient experience. For example, if a healthcare provider was located in an area that had limited parking, they might include an email with parking information as part of their pre-visit customer journey. This type of hyper-personalization can have a significant impact on the patient experience and overall satisfaction. 

It’s also important to customize patient journeys because not all healthcare organizations have the same practices and policies. A patient journey in hospital settings may look very different from a patient journey in a pharmacy setting or insurance setting. It’s also important not to confuse patient flow vs. patient journey. Patient flow and patient journey are both terms for patient engagement tactics that involve mapping patient experiences, however, they have different applications. Patient flow tends to be a very physical process and involves the resources required to move patients from admission to discharge. It can easily be confused with the patient journey. However – patient flow is primarily used in a hospital context and covers the time that they are within the doors. A patient journey is a much longer process and includes the time before and after they leave the healthcare provider’s location. 

Investing in your patient’s holistic experience through the patient journey is one way of building trust. It’s important that your patient feels cared for and heard. Patient-centered care is the foundation of patient satisfaction and retention. Delivering patient-centered care is only possible by listening to and understanding your patient. This is why many healthcare organizations invest in software tools that assist with patient journey mapping through data.

Patient Journey Mapping

Patient journey mapping sounds simple enough, but without data to back it up, it’s simply a guess. It may be impossible to know where patients are getting stuck and having to go back to the beginning of their journey – also known as the Eddy Effect. Authenticx can be used as a patient journey mapping tool because it gives healthcare providers the insights they need to take action and create tools and resources for their patients and staff to overcome these Eddies. This is because Authenticx unlocks the truth happening in your patient conversations with healthcare staff – revealing bad experiences, frustrating conversations, and more. 

Patient journey mapping healthcare experiences helps providers give their patients a predictable experience. It can build trust and set patients at ease to know that every step is accounted for. Here is a common patient journey mapping example that can be used as a framework or template for developing a more specific one: 

On the pre-visit leg of a patient journey, these are likely steps that your patient will take:

• Searching for the best healthcare provider that fits their needs
• Scheduling the appointment
• Creating their patient record by providing their history and necessary paperwork
• Checking in for the appointment

During the visit, your patient will:

• Experience the waiting area of your facility, including your reception staff
• Interact with the nursing staff for vitals and more information about the purpose of their visit
• Meet with the doctor
• Diagnostic techniques such as blood tests or lab work
• Discuss the diagnosis, receive education and follow-up instructions

Post-visit, your patient will:

• Check out of your facility
• Receive a care plan with post-care instructions
• Pay for the medical treatment received
• Encounter patient satisfaction feedback surveys
• Schedule follow-up appointments

This process will likely repeat until the patient is no longer in need of medical intervention. This is also just a baseline from a hospital or primary care perspective. A patient journey mapping pharmacy experience would be different from a hospital or general practitioner. Healthcare organizations should examine their processes and use data to determine their specific patient journey. 

Healthcare Patient Journey Management Software

Many healthcare organizations utilize healthcare patient communication apps that keep patients updated on the state of their care, prescriptions, appointment statuses, and more. These types of software can greatly improve patient satisfaction and retention because there is an open line of communication between the provider and the patient. However, even with patient journey apps, the experience mapping must start somewhere. It’s very difficult to create healthcare patient engagement apps if you aren’t sure what your patients are experiencing. That’s why healthcare providers partner with Authenticx for their healthcare patient journey management software.

Authenticx uses natural language processing to transcribe and categorize your patient’s conversations with your healthcare organization, providing a healthcare patient experience tracking app that can give you the real-time insights you need to make a difference in patient satisfaction. Authenticx can also provide valuable data as to what resources are necessary for a patient journey. If a significant number of your patients are calling to express that they find scheduling their appointment confusing or frustrating, an email with explicit instructions may help to resolve those calls. This type of feedback can be difficult to achieve with any other method. For example, patient feedback surveys can have a bias. Patients must also choose to complete the survey. However, when a patient calls their provider, they are made aware that their call is being recorded. The data from these conversations are valuable and can have a serious impact on processes in the future. 

Authenticx features allow healthcare providers to aggregate and analyze data that would have otherwise been ignored. Unsolicited feedback is an integral part of mapping patient journeys and improving patient satisfaction and retention.

Healthcare Patient Retention

Healthcare patient retention is an important factor in a successful healthcare organization. Improving healthcare patient retention can be done through intelligent and intentional patient journeys that were carefully crafted using healthcare patient empowerment methods. For example, reducing healthcare patient wait times may have a significant impact on patient retention. However – how was the healthcare organization alerted that the wait time was the problem? Authenticx can be used to identify the specific brand detractors that your healthcare organization is experiencing, giving you the insight you need to create a solution to the problem. 

Enhancing healthcare patient outcomes is the primary goal of mapping patient journeys. In order to map quality patient journeys, healthcare organizations need to understand what their patients are going through. Utilizing unsolicited feedback is one of the most powerful ways of getting to the root of the obstacles your patients are facing with your healthcare organization. 

The post-visit leg of the patient journey is especially important when it comes to patient retention. This is the period of time when a patient is most likely to contact the healthcare organization with follow-up questions, confusion, billing inquiries, and more. If these attempts at communicating are unsuccessful, patients may go elsewhere looking for answers. 

The data you receive from Authenticx can help your healthcare organization identify key brand detractors that are causing your patients to defect, decreasing your patient retention. The Smart Sample feature of Authenticx allows healthcare providers to search for conversations about specific themes, topics, or problems to better understand how certain results are occurring. Using the insights gained from that research, healthcare organizations can create a plan for preventing negative outcomes and set best practices for achieving positive outcomes.