Making the Shift from Journey Mapping to Journey Management to Improve Patient Experience and Health Outcomes

// By Rich Phillips //

The U.S. health care industry is undergoing tremendous change — some might say disruption. This is driven by multiple factors, including rising consumer expectations, the significant cost of care noncompliance, and the emergence of nontraditional competitors. To thrive within this tumultuous environment, health systems are increasingly focused on two important issues: (1) the ability to create exceptional patient experiences, and (2) the need to improve health outcomes, particularly those requiring patient engagement.

In the past, health systems have not been equipped with solutions that addressed these two goals, both of which involve the management of patient journeys. To date, the primary form of journey management has been implemented in the form of workflows for providers.

To address the need for patient-facing journey management, the only option available to health system executives historically has been to implement a fractured collection of solutions — EMR, web, texting, CRM, email, and more — and then hope to string these point solutions together as best as possible.

Unfortunately, this approach actually impedes the ability to create a streamlined patient journey, one that simplifies the experience and improves care compliance. The result is that the burden falls on the patient to navigate across multiple contact points spanning a complex health system, while trying to self-manage their care journey.

As a consequence, patients are increasingly frustrated, and their ability to follow clinical care plans is diminished. This challenge manifests itself in both a single-encounter journey as well as scenarios involving multi-encounter, chronic care, or population health management. In fact, according to a study conducted by Johns Hopkins University, the annual cost of patients not following their plan of care is a whopping $300 billion. This underscores the urgency to better manage care needs and journeys before the problem escalates into high-acuity circumstances that impact quality of life and carry significant financial consequences.

The big question is: How can health systems manage the patient journey to deliver exceptional patient experiences and improve health outcomes?

Beyond Journey Mapping

Many health systems are appropriately moving down the path of addressing these challenges by “journey mapping” to discover the gaps within patient journeys and illustrate critical opportunities for improvement. While journey mapping is a helpful step to improving experiences and outcomes, our point of view is that health systems should journey-manage, not just journey-map.

Journey management orchestrates journey maps at scale and in real time by activating patients through personalized journey interaction. This journey interaction actively shapes the journey a patient follows with a data-driven approach, streamlining the experience, reducing the complexity, and increasing plan-of-care compliance. Journey management also “lights up the process,” providing health systems a window into key patient journeys to quickly spot and rectify process gaps or patient activation challenges.

3 Components of Journey Management

Instituting effective journey management requires emphasis on three critical components.

1. First, it is important to determine the signature moments of truth in a patient journey that really matter.

An example outside of health care that most people are familiar with involves the process of securing a home mortgage. When looking for a mortgage, customers care about journey steps such as rate lock, appraisal, closing, and probably two or three other points in that journey. If the mortgage provider gets those signature moments of truth correct, the customer most likely walks away saying, “That was a great experience; they served me well.”

The same holds true in health care, where signature moments of truth drive the patient experience. Finding a doctor, scheduling an appointment, preparing for an encounter, completing the actual encounter, and post-encounter follow-up are examples of moments of truth within a health care patient journey.

2. Second, it is important to understand what patients value at those moments of truth. For some people, gaining deep knowledge about their condition matters the most. For others, being efficient with and respectful of their time are key priorities.

Increasingly we find that consumer-patients expect a personalized “you know me” experience throughout their journey. Done properly, this approach tailors the means of communication to patient preferences, acknowledges unique needs (“I need help with transportation”), and respects their time availability (“I would like to talk to a care navigator on my lunch break.”)

3. Third, we believe journey mapping is important, but journey management is where the real value is delivered. Unfortunately, robust journey management solutions have been lacking in health care. The closest option available to date has been a far more limited platform known as marketing automation, which narrowly addresses some marketing functions but falls short of the robust journeys required for many patient navigation challenges.

From chronic care, to expectant mom, to bariatrics, oncology, and population health, health systems have an escalating need to improve health outcomes and improve experiences in more long-cycle, process-oriented care models.

The principles of moments of truth, understanding value drivers, and personally tailored journeys are key elements to producing an optimum experience. Leveraged in combination with a deep journey management solution, health systems are finally equipped to address the critical need for improved patient experiences and activated patients for increased care compliance.

Underscored by statistics such as the CDC’s finding that 30 percent of prescriptions for chronic health conditions are never filled and nearly half of medicines are not taken as prescribed, there is both urgency and opportunity by adopting proven journey management methods and solutions. Modern, end-to-end platforms directly target these issues by actively managing the care journey, enhancing the patient experience and improving care compliance.

Rich Phillips, CEO and co-founder of Customer Evolution, is a recognized thought leader helping to advance the consumerization of health care for a transformative health experience.