A Google study of hospital selection, as Healthcare Success reports it, found that 83% of patients visited a hospital website before they booked. By the time your front desk hears from someone, much of the decision has already happened somewhere you can't see. Patient journey mapping puts that hidden stretch on paper, so you can fix the places where people quietly give up.
What patient journey mapping actually shows
A patient journey map lays out every touchpoint a patient has with you, from the first search to the follow-up after a visit. Highland Solutions describes the exercise as identifying and understanding the details of all patient touchpoints, so teams can find pain points and line up care across the system.
It splits naturally into three phases. Before the visit covers finding a practitioner, scheduling, sending forms and finding the check-in desk. During the visit covers the front desk, the lobby wait and the conversations with nurses and doctors. After the visit covers instructions, billing, surveys and follow-up calls.
In practice, patient journey mapping fails most often at the handoffs. Marketing teams tend to own the first phase and operations teams the other two, which is exactly why no one sees the whole path. A good map includes the patient's view, the provider's view and the staff's view of the same journey.
The pain points it tends to surface are ordinary ones: a confusing pre-visit experience that sets a bad tone, unclear check-in, missed calls, systems that don't talk to each other, and weak follow-up that can reduce adherence to a treatment plan.
The stages from first search to follow-up
Sources disagree on how many stages to use. For marketing purposes, five hold up well: awareness, consideration, access, the visit itself, and ongoing care. Qualtrics frames them as awareness, consideration, access, service delivery and ongoing care, and Siteimprove's marketing version runs awareness, consideration, decision, treatment and retention.
Awareness
This is the patient realising they need care and starting to look for someone who provides it. In Siteimprove's account the touchpoints are symptom searches, "near me" searches, health blogs and word of mouth from friends.
The job here is to be found and to be useful, not to sell. Patient journey mapping makes the gap visible: if you can't name a page that answers a patient's first question, this stage is empty. Educational pages that answer a symptom question belong to this stage, and so does the groundwork in patient acquisition marketing.
Consideration
Now the patient is deciding whether you can meet their needs, and they rarely decide on one page. In the Google study Healthcare Success describes, 61% of patients visited two or more hospital sites before converting, and 48% spent more than two weeks researching before booking a physician appointment.
Review sites, insurance checks and physician bios all do their work in this stretch. Your listing on a map or search result is often the first thing a patient compares, which makes a well-kept Google Business Profile part of the journey rather than a side task.
Access and booking
Qualtrics notes that patients reach scheduling through phone calls, the patient portal, texts and email. Phone still dominates in the Google data: 56% of those patients booked by calling.
Two consequences follow. A page that looks fine but has no visible phone number loses people, and a booking form that asks too much loses the rest. Map each route separately, because a patient who calls and a patient who uses the portal are living different journeys.
The visit and the follow-up
Once the patient is through the door, the map shifts from marketing to operations. Siteimprove suggests pre-visit forms sent by email with saved progress, text updates on wait times, and follow-up messages within 24 hours of the visit.
Highland's list of post-visit touchpoints is plainer: care instructions, billing, feedback surveys and clinician follow-up. Skip these in your map and you'll have a tidy picture of how patients arrive and no view of whether they come back. Patients who had a poor first visit rarely say so; they just don't rebook, and a map that stops at the appointment can't show that.
How to run patient journey mapping, step by step
You don't need special software to start patient journey mapping. A wall, sticky notes and a handful of honest conversations are enough, and the sequence below combines the approaches from Highland and Qualtrics.
- Pick one patient and one goal. Build a persona from demographics, conditions, pain points and barriers to care, and name what that person is trying to achieve, such as a diagnosis or a procedure.
- Set the start and end points. Start at the first search, not at the front door, and decide where the map stops.
- Collect what you already have. Patient feedback, call logs and website analytics are a better starting point than a blank wall.
- Interview patients and staff. Ask people to recount what happened rather than give opinions, and have a second person take notes.
- Map the steps from the patient's side. Include steps outside your walls, such as checking insurance coverage online.
- Mark the emotional moments. Qualtrics calls the ones that most affect loyalty "moments of truth."
- Prioritise three or four opportunities. Highland recommends stopping at that number, then repeating the exercise for other personas.
Most practices skip the interviews and map from assumptions, which produces a flattering picture. Front desk staff know where patients get lost because they hear the confused phone calls, so ask them before you ask anyone else.
Specialty changes the detail. A dental practice has a recall cycle that a one-off procedure doesn't, and our guide to dental practice customer journey mapping works through that example.
Where patients drop out and what to fix first
After the first round of patient journey mapping, fix the point where the largest number of people leave, and that's usually the move from consideration to booking. A patient who has compared several sites and read a physician bio is close to acting, so friction at that moment costs more than friction anywhere earlier.
Siteimprove reports that more than 60% of people exit during online scheduling because the process is too complex, though it attributes that figure to a TechTarget article we haven't read, so treat it as a pointer to check your own booking flow rather than a benchmark.
Testing that flow is design work as much as marketing. Our UI/UX design service covers booking paths, forms and mobile layouts, and the digital marketing and growth side picks up the search and review touchpoints ahead of it.
Treat the map as a working document. It pays off when someone owns each stage and the team revisits it, not when it hangs on a wall.
Before you change anything, write down the one number each fix should move: calls from the listing, completed booking forms, or no-shows. Then rerun the map in six months and see which gaps closed.
Frequently asked questions
How many stages should a patient journey map have?
There's no standard. Highland uses three phases (before, during and after the visit), while Qualtrics and Siteimprove each use five stages. Choose the framing your team can act on and keep it consistent.
What data should I use to build the map?
Qualtrics lists operational data, patient feedback across channels, observational data and patient behaviour and preference data. Start with the feedback and call records you already hold, then add interviews.
How many problems should I fix first?
Highland advises prioritising the top three or four opportunities from the map. A longer list rarely gets done, and a map with a dozen priorities has none.
Cover photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels
Sources
- Your Hospital Digital Doorway is Bigger Than You Think — Healthcare Success
- What is patient journey mapping — Highland Solutions
