Patient Journey Improvement Project
Introducing This Section
Patient journey improvement focuses on how service delivery influences the experience and outcomes of the people we treat.
It ensures that the process we use to deliver patient care is safe, efficient, collaborative, and cost effective.
The patient journey is not confined to hospital based care as most patients also receive care in primary and community settings. Patient journey improvement encourages an integrated approach to service delivery and the principles of collaborative working.
What's involved in improving the patient journey?
Patient journey improvement exercises gather together key staff from all sectors for a particular pathway of care. These people form the consultation group for the exercise. The group considers how care is currently delivered, barriers and blockages to patient flow and how these issues could be resolved.
In most cases a patient journey mapping exercise is undertaken to discover what really happens to patients being treated. To map a patient journey the same principles of process mapping used in commercial and industrial enterprise are used, however in the context of health services mapping includes all aspects of a pathway from clinical protocols to administration processes, IT functions, and budgets. The principle behind this is that a patient’s journey is not only influenced by the time they spend receiving treatment but by the means and method used to deliver care throughout the process, the flow of information between providers and available resource.
Mapping out the Steps
The group is asked to map out the steps taken to deliver care. This is then compared to treatment protocols or guidelines already in place to see where the service delivered varies from the recommended treatment pathway or where there are barriers to effective patient care. Patients are also asked for feedback on their experience and any areas that could be improved.
Historical patient data and treatment patterns are also considered to gauge demand on available resource and treatment outcomes.