Primary Care Clinic

With new changes to the patient journey, my client was concerned that they were not getting an accurate review of changes to their patient journeys from the post-appointment surveys. Patient satisfaction scores had not budged.

Using service design processes, I documented the patient experience from setting the appointments through patient-doctor consult and procedures through to checkout and payments. Following their checkout, I interviewed patients asking them to describe their journey and capturing the highs and lows, and where issues occurred.

I learned that the client’s initial changes to the patient experience were welcome, but didn’t go far enough to alleviate the stress patients felt throughout their appointments. Post visit interviews helped me understand the patients’ experience: worried, patients grabbed the earliest appointment they could get. They arrived with a litany of concerns that they needed to convey to their doctor, but often forgot critical questions because of when in the process they spoke to their doctor—at the end of the visit. They also knew the nurses were conveying useful information, but failed to recall exact recommendations.

I had each research participant draw their experience on a line. These Journey Maps indicated that patient de-stress moments came at the very end of their visit. Which meant that throughout their visit they had higher than normal cognitive load, decreasing their ability to ask questions and retain the answers.

Communicating the results to the nursing staff and management team, while useful would not provide practical and actionable solutions they could implement. I worked with my client to setup a guided solution ideation session would make the most of their budget and resources.

I developed customer posters that were hung up in staff lunch rooms; and strategy guides that work now and for feature improvements down the road.