Introduction
A particularly good aftereffect of the pandemic is that people have now become more health-conscious than ever. They are proactively taking steps to ensure that they remain in good health, and are also actively involved in their treatment processes if they are ill.
With each patient embarking on a unique healthcare voyage, the patient journey has become a guiding compass for healthcare organizations seeking to deliver patient-centred care and cultivate successful patient acquisition and retention practices. By comprehensively mapping out this journey, healthcare providers can gain invaluable insights into the diverse needs, expectations, and challenges patients face at every step.
What is Patient Journey?
The patient journey begins when a person experiences ill health. It encompasses the entire sequence of interactions and experiences a patient goes through while receiving healthcare services from a provider, in other words, it includes everything from the patient scheduling their first appointment with your practice to them leaving you a review or feedback.
Importance of the Patient Journey
Being aware of every step of the patient journey allows the healthcare provider to ease the process for their patients, develop new ways to enhance patient experience, drive better and more meaningful patient interactions and identify gaps in services if any.
Understanding your patients’ intent and thought process empowers you to build processes and strategies to constantly deliver better healthcare outcomes, improve your practice’s reputation and generate more word-of-mouth referrals.
The 3 Stages of the Patient Journey
The patient journey can be broadly divided into 3 major stages –
- Pre-appointment stage
- During the appointment stage
- Post-appointment stage
Let’s look at these stages individually.
1. Pre Appointment Stage
The pre-appointment stage can be further broken down into three:
1. Discovery
2. Action
3. Conversion
Discovery
Once a patient realizes the need to see a doctor, they enter the discovery phase, actively searching for a suitable healthcare provider to meet their needs. During this phase, there are multiple ways in which potential patients can discover your healthcare practice. These are:
a) Google Search
The patient can do a quick Google search like “doctors near me” or “best {speciality} doctor” to discover the best doctor for them.
What can you do?
– To ensure that patients find your practice during this stage, it is crucial to optimize your healthcare practice’s online presence. One effective way to achieve this is by optimizing your listing for local SEO. This ensures that your practice appears in local search results whenever someone searches for relevant healthcare services in your area.
– Another important thing to do here is to collect reviews and maintain a good overall rating, as potential patients will be looking at reviews while making their decision.
b) Referral/Word of Mouth
Perhaps the most important and robust method for discovery is referrals or word of mouth. People take suggestions from their friends and family more seriously.
What can you do?
– To aid the word-of-mouth method of discovery, you should focus on providing the best possible patient experience. Any patient who has a favourable experience at your practice will pass it on to their peers. Learn how to improve the patient experience here.
c) Medical Review Sites
Popular medical review sites such as Healthgrades are another platform where patients go to assess healthcare practices.
What can you do?
– Ensure you have a profile/listing on all the popular review sites.
– Encourage your existing patients to leave a review on these sites.
– Respond to patient reviews regardless of whether they are positive or negative
Doing these will demonstrate to the potential patient that your practice is legitimate and that you care about your patient’s opinions. It’s a good way to build your reputation.
d) Paid Advertisements
If you run ads, you can expect potential patients to find you this way. Once a patient encounters your ad and interacts with it, you can expect them to turn into patients.
What can you do?
After a user interacts with the Ad, you need to ensure a smooth conversion process. Suppose the Ad takes the user to your website or a landing page, you need to check for these important things:
1) The page is optimized for conversion through attractive visuals and compelling CTA’s.
2) Lead capture through forms.
3) Compelling ad copies with striking content
4) Easy appointment scheduling options
5) FAQ section to answer any patient doubts
6) Webchat for live resolution of queries
Action
After a patient has discovered your healthcare facility, they will take action by contacting you to schedule an appointment. During this process, there are a few things you need to do to ensure conversion.
a) Make Sure You are Reachable
If the patient has the intent to schedule an appointment, you need to ensure that you are reachable. Identify the potential channels from where the patient could reach you. These are mostly through the website’s webchat, through your Google My Business profile, Phone, Text, and Email. Establish solid means for response on these channels.
For example, if the patient expresses an interest to book an appointment through Webchat, you need to have a system in place that assures that the patient’s request will be attended to. One way you can do this is by automating the process of converting your web conversations to text. Once the conversation transfers to text, available members from your team can respond to the message and schedule the appointment, or the patients can schedule the appointment by themselves through the appointment scheduling link.
You can even go one step further and use an automated scheduling system to do the job without human interference.
If the patient calls to schedule an appointment, make sure that their call is attended even if it is outside office hours. If by chance no one is available to attend the call, a follow-up text can help engage the patient and get them to schedule an appointment. This way you are even responding to missed calls. This process can also be automated with a software like Emitrr. With Emitrr, as soon as the call is missed, a follow-up text message with appointment scheduling prompts will be sent.
b) Ensure Staff is Trained to Handle Patient Calls
Your staff is the first interaction the patient will have with your healthcare facility. How they handle this first interaction, sets the tone for the entire patient journey. If the staff is warm and welcoming, the patient will feel at ease visiting your practice. Therefore, it is essential that you ensure that your staff is trained on how to interact with patients at every stage of the patient journey.
Conversion
After the patient has scheduled the appointment, you must ensure they keep up with it. To ascertain that the patient wouldn’t feel overwhelmed during this stage, you need to do a few things:
a) Send Appointment Reminders
The most important part of this stage is enabling the patient to keep up with the appointment. Appointment reminders are a great way to ensure this. Set up appointment reminders leading up to the day of the appointment, to remind patients that they have scheduled an appointment that they need to keep up with.
Text appointment reminders do a great job of ensuring that patients receive and read the message. This is because text message has a high open rate of 98%.
b) Allow Digital Check-In
It’s no news that filling in the patient intake form at the healthcare facility can be a nightmare for patients. To ensure minimal wait time for the patients at the clinic, you can have them fill out this form in the comfort of their homes. All you need to do is send them the intake form through a HIPAA-compliant messaging system and ask them to fill it out before they reach the facility. This way wait time at the practice is reduced and the patient will have a better onboarding experience.
c) Integrate Patient Data in the EMR
Make sure that the system you use to collect the patient intake form integrates with your EMR. This way you can easily access important patient information and be prepared for all the following patient appointments.
2. During the Appointment Stage
The first real and impactful communication with the patient happens at the healthcare facility. It’s important that this stage of the patient journey is not intimidating for the patients. Some things you can do to ensure a good patient experience at this stage are:
a) Make it Easy for the Patient to Navigate the Practice
Visiting a healthcare facility is not always intimidating for the patient, but it’s better for us to assume that it is and think of ways to ease their experience. A warm and welcoming reception area can reduce patient anxiety and create a positive environment.
An effective reception area will be able to convey to the patients what they need to do. You can put up signs and posters of do’s and don’t to ensure patients aren’t confused about onboarding or wait times.
Friendly and knowledgeable staff who can answer questions and provide guidance contribute to a positive patient experience.
Fun Fact: A study in the Journal of Hospital Medicine revealed that effective communication during the reception process positively influenced patient satisfaction.
Another important thing to keep in mind with respect to the reception area is how it is designed. A clean, organized, and aesthetically pleasing space can help create a positive impression. Comfortable seating, adequate lighting, and accessible amenities contribute to a more positive patient experience
b) Ensure Minimal Wait Time
If you have followed the steps of the pre-appointment stage and utilized digital intake forms, you have effectively communicated to the patient that the waiting time at the clinic has been reduced. Communication remains crucial during the appointment stage as well. For instance, if the doctor is running 15 minutes late, you can easily inform the scheduled patients of the day, enabling them to avoid arriving early and waiting unnecessarily. Even if they still choose to come early, they will not be caught off guard by the delay.
c) Have Meaningful Doctor-Patient Communication
Doctor-patient communication lays down the foundation for the patient’s experience.
Things to be mindful of during the appointment are:
– Be friendly and welcoming
– Ask the patient how they are doing
– Lend a sympathetic ear while they narrate their problems
– Calmly explain your diagnosis and address any questions the patient may have
– Give assurance
Remembering these simple things can ensure that the patient leaves your clinic relieved and not worried.
3. After the Appointment
After the appointment, patient engagement becomes the primary focus for healthcare providers in the patient journey. Unlike during the appointment or the pre-appointment stage, there is no direct interaction with healthcare staff, and the immediate healthcare goals have already been addressed. Therefore, engaging with patients during the post-appointment stage requires meticulous attention. Patient engagement is necessary for two reasons:
a) To Follow Up with Patients
After the patient has received treatment from the doctor, it is important to follow up with them to ensure they are adhering to the prescribed medications, lifestyle changes, and other recommendations. Communication for educational purposes is necessary to ensure the patient’s continued well-being. One effective approach is to ask patients about their preferred communication method and utilize that channel to send all relevant communications.
b) To Get Patient Feedback and Review
To gain a thorough understanding of the patient journey, it is crucial to seek feedback directly from patients. This allows you to assess whether the services provided met their expectations and identify areas for improvement, if any.
In the previous steps, we advised asking patients about their preferred communication methods. Using this information, you should send them requests for feedback.
Feedback holds great value as positive responses can prompt patients to leave reviews, while negative feedback can provide valuable insights to enhance your services and processes.
What are the Benefits of Having a Smooth Patient Journey?
Healthcare practices can benefit from curating a smooth patient journey. Some of the benefits of a smooth patient journey are:
Improved Patient Satisfaction Scores
A smooth patient journey ensures that patients have a good experience with your healthcare practice. This inturn ensures that patients are satisfied. If you wish to objectively measure the effects of a smooth patient journey, you can use the patient satisfaction survey HCAHPS and see the result for yourself. Improved patient satisfaction can lead to increased patient loyalty, positive word-of-mouth referrals, and better online reviews, which are crucial for the reputation of healthcare practices.
Reduced Operational Burdens
A tenant of curating a smooth patient journey is automating the process as much as possible. Starting from scheduling to asking for patient feedback, the entire journey can be automated using relevant automation tools. This will help your staff save a lot of time. With reduced operational burdens, they can divert their full attention to providing a truly excellent patient experience. It allows for better utilization of resources, improved staff satisfaction, and increased capacity to serve more patients.
Enhanced Efficiency in Administrative Tasks
A well-curated patient journey can streamline administrative tasks and reduce paperwork. By implementing digital systems for appointment scheduling, registration, and documentation, healthcare practices can automate routine administrative processes. This saves time for both patients and staff, reduces the risk of errors, and allows healthcare providers to focus more on direct patient care.
How can Emitrr Help You Improve Your Patient Journey?
Emitrr is a patient interaction and engagement platform that can effectively streamline the patient journey. Emitrr can provide valuable assistance in various stages of the patient journey, including:
During the Pre-Appointment Stage
Emitrr can empower your staff to handle patient calls more efficiently.
Emitrr’s phone system seamlessly integrates with your EHR/PMS, eliminating the need for traditional landlines. You can conveniently answer calls directly from our platform, and relevant details about the caller will be displayed as a call pop. Additionally, call analytics and metrics are available to provide deeper insights into call performance.
With Emitrr, you can leverage our text messaging capabilities for appointment scheduling. Once appointments are scheduled, our two-way texting feature allows you to send appointment reminders efficiently. If you wish to send alerts or updates to your entire database you can explore our mass texting feature.
To Reduce Waiting Time During the Appointment Day
you can create and send patient intake forms digitally using Emitrr. Creating forms on the Emitrr platform is super easy and intuitive. Once you’ve created the forms you can send them using our Form Request features. Learn more about how to use the form feature here.
During the Post-Appointment Stage
You can use Emitrr’s 2-way texting feature to send follow-up messages, feedback forms, review requests, etc. Another important part of the patient journey is ensuring that patients turn up for their regular check-ups This process is called recall/reactivation and you can use Emitrr’s recall features for the same. Learn how you can use Emitrr to automate recalls here.
Frequently Asked Questions
The patient journey care pathway refers to all the stages and steps the patient goes through in the management of their disease, right from the diagnosis to palliative care.
The patient journey begins right from the recognition of the first system to the final treatment and outcome of the treatment. This entire process includes several stages: awareness, consideration, access to treatment, treatment service, care delivery, and post-treatment care and engagement.
Conclusion
Every step of the patient journey should be meticulously examined by healthcare professionals involved in the healthcare system. Patients often experience discomfort regarding their illness or disease, making it essential for healthcare providers to prioritize an empathetic approach when interacting with patients. By treating patients with care and respect, they are more likely to feel at ease.
Communication is another crucial aspect of the patient journey. How effectively can the healthcare system communicate with patients? Is it easy for patients to contact their providers? As a healthcare provider, it is important to reflect on these questions. Utilizing communication tools can greatly enhance patient communication and engagement.
Considering a patient engagement and interaction software can simplify your tasks as a healthcare provider. A successful patient journey relies on effective communication between providers and patients, so it is essential to leverage tools that aid in creating a smooth process. Ensure that you make every effort to facilitate a healthy exchange of communication and contribute to a positive patient experience.
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