Understanding the Patient Journey

Understanding the patient journey can be easy. The content on this page will help you think about designing the patient journey in your practice that you want to create.

Is Understanding the Patient Journey in Your Practice Important?

Yes! When is the last time you went through the patient experience in your practice? You don’t have to do this yourself, you might enlist the help of a secret-shopper friend.

Perhaps most importantly, having someone you know go through secretly and report back to you is smart. This will help you get a baseline of where you are today.

When Does Your Patient Journey Begin?

As soon as someone discovers you as a solution to their problem. That’s why understanding the patient journey is critical to the success of your practice in the Experience Economy.

When you understand the trek your patients are taking through the stages of awareness, appealing, asking, acting, and advocating for you as their doctor, your business will grow!

Is Your Patient Experienced Designed by You and Your Team?

I’ll start by telling you what it means to design your patient journey. After that, I’ll give you three ideas to get started understanding your patient journey and designing it.

Ok. I have a confession to make: I can’t stand the word “Journey.” While it is apropos in many instances. It. Is. So. Overused. May we agree on “Trek” as a substitute every once-in-a-while?

Designing your patient trek is about being intentional. For instance, when someone walks into your practice what is the first thing they see? What do they smell? How are they greeted?

You have full control over this and designing and understanding the patient journey requires you to pay attention. And this can start before people ever set foot in your office, too. 

What are three steps to understanding the patient journey in your practice?

Step One

Survey your staff. Ask them what they think are the steps and contact point people go through in your practice? Have they mapped them out? Have you thought about what messages the patient is receiving along the trek?

Step Two of Understanding the Patient Journey

Survey your new patients and a dozen or so of your current patients,, too. What you learned in step one, use these themes to develop questions you might ask on surveys.

Step Three

Combine what you learn in steps one and two to create a roadmap to understanding the patient journey and making improvements one-at-a-time. If you try to do too much too fast, you will not succeed.

Here's an article about understanding the patient experience that might help you, too.

In Conclusion

The patient journey and patient experience are like peas and carrots. They look nice, go well together, and round the meal. So when you work on one, the other improves, too.

There are lots of facets to the exploration of the patient trek in your practice. I’ll continue to create content on this page to help you with understanding the patient journey in your practice. So that means you will want to stop back often to see what’s new!

If you’d like a free pdf that I put together about how to make your customers and prospects feel special, fill out the form below. Or, if you’d like to schedule a time to discuss something you’re working on, email me at Joel@makemarketingeasy.com.

Good luck and good marketing and selling!