What is the patient journey? 

At its core, the patient journey encompasses three stages: 

• Pre-Visit: This is the period before a patient physically sees their doctor. It involves searching for a healthcare provider, scheduling an appointment, and completing any required pre-visit steps. 
• Visit: This stage encompasses the actual interaction between the patient and doctor. It includes activities such as getting checked into their appointment, waiting to see their doctor, and seeing their doctor. These interactions can happen in-office or virtually via telehealth.  
• Post-Visit: Once a patient leaves their doctor’s office, they’ll continue to interact with the doctor. This stage will include all post-visit activities such as filling prescriptions, following care plan instructions, or scheduling follow-up appointments.  

The activities that occur within each stage of the patient journey are often non-linear and can vary based on the patient’s personal preferences, access to technology, or even the type of care they are looking to receive.  

The significance of optimizing this journey cannot be overstated, as a positive patient experience is closely linked to better health outcomes and lower overall cost of care. Recent studies by Accenture indicate that hospitals providing a superior patient experience typically achieve margins that are 50% higher than those of their counterparts. 

How can providers optimize the patient journey? 

Optimizing the patient journey requires a multifaceted approach, integrating technology, communication, and patient-centered care principles. 

Some of these strategies include:  

1. Seamless Access: Ensure patients can easily manage their healthcare experience even when they’re not physically in the office. Technology is often required to facilitate these offline interactions. Some examples include online scheduling platforms, the digitization of intake forms and an easy-to-use patient portal for accessing lab results and seamlessly communicating with providers.  

1. Personalized Experiences: Every patient is unique and has different preferences for how and when they’ll interact with their providers. One person may prefer email or text, and another receiving phone calls. Give them multiple options to manage the healthcare experience and communicate with providers, so they can use what’s most comfortable to them.  

1. Enhanced Communication: Foster clear, empathetic, and consistent communication throughout the patient journey. This includes providing information in accessible formats, actively listening to patient concerns, and involving them in decision-making processes. 

1. Coordination and Continuity: Facilitate smooth transitions between different phases of care and across healthcare settings. This involves effective coordination between healthcare providers, specialists, and support services to ensure continuity of care. 

Barriers to optimizing the patient journey 

Despite the importance of optimizing the patient journey, there are several barriers that prevent providers from doing it effectively.  

These include:  

1. Fragmented User Experience: Technology plays a pivotal role in optimizing the patient journey. Yet, there are few solutions on the market that can fully cater to each touchpoint a patient has during their care experience. As a result, providers leverage solutions from multiple vendors to satisfy these needs, leading to a disjointed experience for both patients and staff. Multiple logins add unnecessary frustration, and the inconsistent look and feel across each solution exacerbates the issue. These impediments can deter patients from interacting with these solutions, negatively impacting a provider’s ability to optimize the patient journey.  

1. Lack of Continuity: Healthcare systems often operate in silos, hindering seamless coordination and communication between providers and services. This, in turn, impedes a patient’s ability to effectively manage the entirety of their care experience, particularly if they are receiving treatment from multiple providers across different networks. 

1. Socioeconomic Barriers: Disparities in socioeconomic status and access to technology can hinder individuals from utilizing the tools that providers have implemented to optimize the patient journey. Furthermore, even in cases where socioeconomic conditions do not prevent patients from utilizing technology, some may lack the technical know-how to fully utilize all the resources available to them. 

1. Resistance to Change: Implementing changes to optimize the patient journey may encounter resistance from entrenched practices, cultural norms, or technological barriers. 

Optimizing the patient journey with the right technology 

Creating a patient journey that fosters positive experiences, increases engagement and improves outcomes can be accomplished by using technology that caters to each patient’s unique situation.  

Let’s demonstrate what an optimized patient journey looks like using InteliChart’s award-winning patient engagement platform. With solutions that specifically cater to each stage of the patient journey, our solutions can significantly enhance the patient experience while streamlining administrative processes for staff.  

Before Sarah’s Visit 

Sarah has always considered herself to be a healthy person. She eats well, exercises regularly, and doesn’t have any major health problems. So, Sarah hasn’t visited a doctor since COVID because her previous provider has retired. After an online search, she finds a provider she thinks will be a good fit.  

Enter InteliChart. Engaging with Sarah from the start of her healthcare journey using the functionalities of our Healthy Outcomes platform gives her the convenience she needs to move forward. She clicks a link from her chosen provider’s Google Business Listing and finds that she doesn’t need to be an established patient to make an appointment with InteliChart’s Patient Schedule, so books the next available time slot.  

Sarah soon receives a text letting her know her appointment has been confirmed with a link to add it to her calendar.  A few days before her appointment, she receives another appointment reminder with a link to check-in. Since Sarah has scheduled an appointment during her workday, she wants to spend as little time as possible in the doctor’s office so follows the link and begins filling out her intake forms. She realizes she needs to pick her daughters up from soccer practice, so saves her forms so she can complete them later in the evening.  

With InteliChart, patients can fill out intake forms anywhere – at home, via a mobile device, or in the waiting room. Information can be saved as you go, so picking up from where you left off is easy if you can’t complete all the forms in one sitting.  

Sarah is relieved that making an appointment and filling out the forms is so easy. She’s looking forward to her appointment and knowing what is wrong, but worries that with her busy schedule, she might become distracted and miss her visit.  

InteliChart has Sarah covered. Our Patient Notify tool sends her automated reminders leading up to her appointment. The next morning when Sarah checks her email, she sees that she’s received a message from her provider inviting her to create a portal account, but since she’s late for work  doesn’t open the message.  

Since Sarah’s provider uses InteliChart, when Sarah didn’t register for a portal account after the first message, a registration reminder prompt was automatically sent two days later.  

Sarah clicks the registration link and is quickly able to create an account in the portal.  She views her lab results and schedules a virtual visit. 

InteliChart’s Patient Portal puts everything patients need in one convenient location. Sarah is able to view lab results, book her next appointment, and send secure messages with questions to her provider all from her online patient dashboard. 

Shortly before Sarah’s virtual visit, she receives a reminder text with a secure link. When it’s time for her appointment, Sarah clicks the link and is pleasantly surprised to find she is taken directly to her visit, without the need to log in.  

During the visit, Sarah’s doctor talks with her about her diagnosis and they agree to enroll Sarah in a program designed specifically for pre-diabetic patients. Sarah is hopeful that with the right support she can avoid the consequences of living with diabetes. 

Sarah’s doctor uses InteliChart’s Patient Activate and Patient Survey to create set-and-forget campaigns to educate patients about their diagnosis, send helpful information to support them on the journey to better health, and keep in touch between visits with surveys that capture patient reported outcomes (PROs).  

Sarah uses the patient education and information that is routinely sent by her doctor, and she thinks she is improving. She responds to automated surveys, so her provider knows she is staying on-track with her care plan. She returns to the office after three months for a blood draw to monitor her progress and see how she is responding to her medication. The provider’s office recommends a virtual visit to go over the results. After checking her schedule, Sarah goes online to book an appointment.  

InteliChart’s eHealth makes telehealth easy for patients and providers. Visits mimic in-person workflows, so Sarah is checked-in by staff and handed-off to her doctor who can concentrate solely on her test results.  

During her next virtual visit, Sarah is relieved to learn her test results have improved and her doctor adjusts her medication accordingly. Sarah asks questions about her care plan and is advised to keep up the good work and return to the office in three months for another blood draw to check her progress. After her appointment, Sarah logs onto the Patient Portal so see her lab results and schedule her next visit.