What is the Patient Journey?

The patient journey has become a central focus in healthcare as organizations strive to deliver exceptional experiences that meet rising patient expectations. But what is the patient journey, and how can healthcare providers use tools like patient portals and patient journey mapping to optimize it? In this article, we’ll define the healthcare patient journey, outline its stages, and explore how BridgeInteract empowers organizations to streamline and enhance every touchpoint.

What Is The Patient Journey? Getting Started

The patient journey is the sequence of events a patient experiences from the moment they identify a need for care to ongoing management and follow-up. It encompasses every interaction patients have with a healthcare organization, including marketing, education, scheduling, clinical visits, post-visit care, and beyond. Unlike traditional approaches focusing solely on clinical care, the healthcare patient journey includes non-clinical touchpoints such as digital engagement, billing, and patient feedback.

Optimizing the patient journey is critical for improving patient satisfaction, fostering loyalty, and driving better health outcomes. BridgeInteract helps healthcare organizations take control of the patient journey, offering a composable patient engagement platform to create seamless, personalized experiences.

Why Is The Patient Journey Important?

In today’s consumer-driven healthcare landscape, patients expect more personalized, convenient, and transparent experiences. Every touchpoint in the patient journey—from discovering providers to paying bills—can potentially build or erode trust. Research shows that 76% of patients share negative healthcare experiences, underscoring the importance of getting the patient journey right (1). By improving each stage of the journey, healthcare organizations can:

Enhance patient satisfaction and loyalty (2).
Increase patient retention and reduce churn.
Support better health outcomes through consistent engagement (3).
Strengthen their reputation in an increasingly competitive market.

Considering the patient as a consumer or customer isn’t about minimizing the importance of clinical work—it’s about taking a holistic view of the patient journey to create an exceptional experience from start to finish. Happy patients are more engaged with their healthcare and ready to be more active in preventative care and seeking the help they need.

What Does The Patient Journey Look Like?

Although specific stages may vary between different kinds of healthcare organizations, the patient journey always begins with someone seeking care. If you want a patient to engage with your services at this point, it pays to offer them convenient access to your organization’s patient-facing online tools—what is known in healthcare as a digital front door. Ideally, the patient’s journey does not ‘end’, as such but becomes an ongoing, positive relationship with their health and provider.

Patient Journey Mapping: The First Step

Patient journey mapping is the process of visually outlining each step of the patient journey to identify pain points, gaps in care, and opportunities for improvement. This technique helps organizations understand the patient experience from their perspective, enabling them to take action to enhance satisfaction and engagement.

Benefits Of Patient Journey Mapping:

Pinpoint pain points: Uncover barriers that hinder access, care delivery, or follow-up.
Enhance personalization: Create tailored experiences by understanding patient preferences.
Align teams: Foster collaboration across departments with a unified view of the patient experience.
Drive proactive care: Address issues before they escalate by using real-time insights.
Improve outcomes: Strengthen engagement to help patients stay on track with their care plans.

Types Of Patient Journey Maps

When creating a patient journey map, consider which type best aligns with your objectives:

Current state: Focuses on what patients do, think, and feel in their interactions today. Useful for identifying immediate areas for improvement.
Future state: Visualizes the ideal patient journey, helping align teams and set strategic goals for new services and processes.
Day in the life: Examines patient behaviors and challenges over a specific day, incorporating both healthcare and non-healthcare interactions.
Service blueprint: Adds layers to a journey map, such as systems, processes, and policies, to provide a more detailed view of the operational environment.

How To Create a Patient Journey Map

Follow these steps to build an effective patient journey map:

Define your target audience: Identify the specific patient population or persona you want to map, such as oncology patients or expectant mothers.
Establish personas: Create profiles based on demographics, behaviors, goals, and pain points to better understand your audience’s needs.
Set goals: Determine what your patients aim to achieve during their journey, such as receiving a diagnosis, managing chronic conditions, or completing treatment.
Outline patient steps: Map out each step patients take to accomplish their goals, focusing on their perspective rather than your internal processes.
Gather feedback: Use surveys, focus groups, and omnichannel listening to capture patient insights at every stage.
Analyze data: Identify trends, emotional moments, and opportunities for improvement using analytics and benchmarking tools.
Take action: Use your map to prioritize projects, refine processes, and engage stakeholders in driving improvements.

Patient Journey Example

Even across various healthcare services, the patient journey usually hits a specific sequence of touchpoints. Here’s an end-to-end outline of a typical patient journey:

1. Awareness: Patients recognize a need for care and begin researching options. This stage includes:

Online searches for symptoms and providers.
Exploring reviews, community involvement, and marketing campaigns.
Recommendations from friends, family, or other healthcare providers.

2. Consideration: Patients evaluate their options and decide whether your organization can meet their needs. Key touchpoints include:

Website visits and provider search tools.
Checking insurance coverage and benefits.
Reading ratings and reviews or contacting your organization for more information.

3. Access: Patients begin interacting directly with your organization to schedule care. This stage involves:

Appointment scheduling via phone, portal or app.
Pre-visit communications like reminders and intake forms.
Verifying insurance and preparing for the visit.

4. Service Delivery: Patients receive care, with touchpoints including:

Check-in and registration processes.
Interactions with healthcare providers during consultations or procedures.
Discharge instructions and post-visit follow-up.

5. Ongoing Care: Engagement continues after the visit to ensure long-term health management. Examples include:

Receiving lab results and medication reminders.
Participating in wellness programs or managing chronic conditions.
Communication with providers through portal messaging, emails, live chat, or calls.

6. Lifestyle Changes: For some patients, the journey includes lifestyle adjustments to maintain health and prevent readmissions. Touchpoints here may involve:

Education on preventive care and healthy habits.
Support for social determinants of health.
Population health initiatives to improve outcomes at scale.

How BridgeInteract Enhances The Patient Journey

BridgeInteract equips healthcare organizations with the tools to own and optimize the patient journey. By integrating advanced technology and actionable insights, BridgeInteract helps providers:

Streamline touchpoints: From scheduling to billing, BridgeInteract simplifies every step of the journey for a smoother patient experience.
Engage patients: Provide personalized communications, reminders, and education that foster trust and loyalty.
Leverage data: Use data-driven insights to identify pain points and refine strategies.
Integrate seamlessly: Connect all systems with powerful APIs to ensure a consistent, unified experience.
Adapt proactively: Continuously improve care delivery with tools that evolve with patient needs.

BridgeInteract is a composable patient engagement platform that allows healthcare organizations to build their ideal patient engagement solution for every step of the patient journey. Our extensive expertise in security and healthcare software integrations lets you pick and choose BridgeInteract modules, custom solutions, your proprietary software, or third-party tools to offer an unbeatable experience from start to finish.

Optimizing The Patient Journey With BridgeInteract

Here’s an example of how you can use BridgeInteract modules to optimize the typical patient journey:

Awareness

Leverage Bridge’s expert marketing partners to get your organization’s services in front of potential patients.

Consideration

Make your services more attractive with BridgeInteract’s user-friendly design and unified aesthetics across patient-facing tools.
Choose Bridge Mobile to get your own branded mobile app for healthcare services that appeals to the modern, smartphone-centric patient.

Access and service delivery

Remove barriers to care by offering patients varying access points with Bridge Portal and Bridge Mobile.
Make access both secure and user-friendly with passwordless verification and proxy account support.
Conduct secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth visits (including virtual waiting rooms) with Bridge Virtual Care.
Integrate Bridge Scheduling for an intuitive, responsive appointment booking solution.
Streamline the care process with custom forms through Bridge Intake for registration, screening, etc.
Get automatic, accurate insurance verification and convenient online patient payment options using Bridge Pay.
Leverage automated processes and chatbots to onboard patients quickly without waiting on the phone.

Ongoing care and lifestyle

Send HIPAA-compliant portal messages, SMS texts, emails, and notifications using Bridge Communication.
Empower patients to actively participate in their care by offering follow-up appointments, prescription refills, lab results, remote monitoring, patient education, and more in Bridge Portal and Bridge Mobile.

Final Thoughts

The patient journey is more than a series of clinical interactions—it’s a comprehensive experience that spans the entire continuum of care. By understanding and optimizing this journey through tools like patient journey mapping and the right digital front door strategy, healthcare organizations can improve patient satisfaction, enhance loyalty, and achieve better outcomes. With BridgeInteract, you can take control of the patient journey and create seamless, patient-centered experiences that set your organization apart.

Experience the BridgeInteract difference. Schedule a demo today!

More Resources:

References:

Lisa Allen, Ph.D. 2017. The 4 Values of a Positive Patient Experience. Johns Hopkins Medicine. [Online] Available at: Link. Accessed 23 January 2025.
Birkeland, S., Bismark, M., Barry, M.J. and Möller, S., 2022. Is greater patient involvement associated with higher satisfaction? Experimental evidence from a vignette survey. BMJ Quality & Safety, 31(2), pp.86–93. Available at: Link. Accessed 23 January, 2025.
Çakmak, C. and Uğurluoğlu, Ö., 2024. The effects of patient-centered communication on patient engagement, health-related quality of life, service quality perception and patient satisfaction in patients with cancer: A cross-sectional study in Türkiye. Cancer Control, 31, p.10732748241236327. Available at: Link. Accessed 23 January, 2025.