Here’s our step-by-step guide on patient journey mapping

    Patient_journey_mapping_blog

    Quick summary

    We break down the full process of patient journey mapping for teams in high-stakes industries. You’ll learn how to define goals, segment patients, gather real insights, and build maps that drive measurable change. We also explore how TheyDo helps teams turn complex journeys into aligned, actionable strategies, whether you’re in healthcare or pharma. If you need more than surface-level CX, this guide is for you. Visit our blog for more tips about customer journeys.

    Want to create the best patient experience?

    Most published patient journey mapping studies involve less than 50 participants, highlighting the need for scalable, data-driven methods to capture broader insights.

    In this TheyDo guide, we’ll walk you through the essentials of patient journey mapping, what it is, why it matters, and how to do it right. 

    But first…

    Why listen to us?

    We stand out by transforming fragmented customer data into actionable insights using our AI-powered Journey Management platform. We’ve empowered several organizations like NCR, Polestar, and Manitoba Public Insurance to enhance cross-functional collaboration and align strategies around customer journeys. We make sure businesses can make informed decisions, leading to improved customer experiences and operational efficiency.

    quote
    "TheyDo is a tool that brings a really simple viewport into a really complex issue."
    Florian Vollmer

    Florian Vollmer

    Service Design and Design Thinking Lead at NCR

    What is patient journey mapping?

    Patient journey mapping visualizes every step a patient takes across your services, from symptoms to diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up. It shows what they do, think, and feel at each stage.

    You can use it to surface friction, find gaps, and understand needs in context. This gives teams a shared view of what matters most.

    Unlike static surveys or siloed data, journey maps tie everything together in real time. When done well, they align departments, reduce waste, and improve outcomes for both patients and the business.

    Why is patient journey mapping important?

    • Reveals experience gaps: Spot where patients get stuck, drop off, or feel frustrated then fix it with purpose.

    • Aligns teams fast: Give every department a shared view of the patient journey to cut silos and stay focused on outcomes.

    • Prioritizes what works: Use real data to decide what matters most, instead of guessing or chasing trends.

    • Improves ROI: Identify high-impact changes that improve patient outcomes and reduce operational waste.

    How to map the patient journey in 6 steps

    1. Define the scope and goal of the journey map

    Start with a clear reason for mapping the journey. You’re not making diagrams, you’re solving a problem. So, it’s best to define what success looks like before you map a single step.

    Set the scope by deciding which patient group, condition, or service you’ll focus on. Broad journeys feel impressive but often lead to vague outcomes. A narrow focus is what drives action.

    Get specific about your outcomes. For example:

    • Are you trying to improve NPS for oncology patients?

    • Are you aiming to reduce onboarding time in outpatient care?

    • Are you trying to increase adherence for chronic condition programs?

    Your journey should help answer one priority question.

    This is also where you align teams. Involve key stakeholders from clinical, marketing, IT, and operations teams to ensure the map reflects organizational realities and gains traction. Their input avoids rework later.

    Our platform makes this step easier by letting teams co-create journey objectives using shared templates and criteria. That upfront clarity keeps work grounded in real impact.

    Use this checklist to lock in your scope and goal:

    • One clear business problem to solve

    • One specific patient segment

    • Cross-functional agreement on success metrics

    • A realistic level of detail for the journey scope

    The sharper the scope, the more useful your map becomes.

    2. Identify and segment patient personas 

    One map rarely fits all. To build journeys that deliver impact, you need to segment patients by needs, behaviors, or service interactions, not just demographics.

    For example, a post-surgery patient navigating a large hospital system has different needs than someone managing a chronic condition through virtual care.

    Start with personas that reflect real patient variation. Chronic care patients differ from surgical recovery patients. Self-service digital users face different pain points than in-clinic visitors. So, it’s best to segment based on patterns that affect how people move through care.

    Avoid fictional personas. Use real data from service logs, call transcripts, and patient interviews to define core behaviors and expectations. If personas don’t reflect measurable differences in need or experience, they won’t drive useful decisions.

    We support persona development by linking insights, behavior clusters, and journey stages in a shared framework. This helps teams see how distinct segments experience care, and where their needs diverge.

    When building or refining personas, focus on:

    • The care goal they’re trying to achieve

    • Their digital vs. in-person preferences

    • Barriers they face at different journey stages

    • Key emotional drivers (e.g., anxiety, confusion, frustration)

    Once personas are defined, you can map journeys with nuance. The result: clearer patterns, more accurate pain points, and better alignment across departments. 

    You’re not just mapping for empathy, but also building a blueprint for scalable, targeted improvements.

    3. Gather qualitative and quantitative data 

    You can’t map what you don’t understand. Before building anything, collect real patient data on what they say, do, and feel at every stage of care. 

    Traditionally, researchers engage and document patients' experiences through interviews and observations, but that data often sits unused unless it’s structured and shared.

    Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative sources. Interviews and open-text surveys capture emotion and intent. Claims data, call logs, and EHR (Electronic Health Record) show behavior at scale. You need both to be able to surface patterns and pressure points.

    Avoid over-relying on internal opinions. Clinicians and service managers know their workflows, but they rarely experience them as patients do. Data anchors the work in reality.

    Our Journey AI helps teams synthesize raw feedback from multiple sources into structured, reusable insights. You can surface themes quickly and tie them to real stages in the journey.

    To streamline data collection:

    • Audit existing sources: patient support logs, survey tools, CRM records, etc.

    • Set filters for the segment and scope defined in Step 2

    • Tag insights to moments or touchpoints, don’t let them float

    • Store them where teams can find and act on them

    Quality data shapes the difference between generic and high-impact journey maps. Build a library of evidence you can revisit and expand.

    This isn’t a one-time project. It’s a living system for making better decisions over time.

    4. Map the key stages and touchpoints 

    Now structure the journey. Break it into clear, sequential stages that reflect how patients move through your system, not how your organizational chart works.

    Each stage should represent a shift in patient goals or experience, like:

    • Symptom recognition

    • Diagnosis

    • Treatment planning

    • Recovery

    • Ongoing care

    Define what starts and ends each stage. Avoid vague labels like “support” or “follow-up” unless you’ve clearly scoped them.

    Touchpoints are where patients interact with your system: appointments, emails, portals, billing. Organizing touchpoints into a clear visual narrative helps teams move from data overload to shared understanding and action.

    Include internal steps too, which can be:

    • Scheduling handoffs

    • Lab reviews

    • Discharge calls

    These often create delays or friction that patients feel but can’t see.

    With our patient journey mapping feature, healthcare teams can map every patient touchpoint, connect insights across departments, and prioritize improvements using real-time data and structured workflows.

    Use these tips to structure with clarity:

    • Limit stages to what your team can act on, don’t overcomplicate

    • Use verbs for actions, not nouns for departments (e.g. instead of labeling a touchpoint as “Radiology” (a department), describe the actual step, such as “Patient undergoes MRI”)

    • Anchor touchpoints to time, channel, or task (e.g., “24-hour test result delay via portal”)

    • Connect stages to persona goals and emotional states

    This is where the map becomes usable. A well-structured journey isn’t just descriptive, it becomes a tool to deliver impact across roles, systems, and silos. Get this right, and you’ll see better decisions downstream.

    5. Capture emotions, needs, and pain points at each stage 

    Patients move through care emotionally. Your journey map should reflect that. Map not just what happens, but how it feels.

    Each stage should surface the patient's emotional state: anxious during diagnosis, confused about discharge, relieved after treatment. You’re looking for friction, hesitation, or unmet expectations, not just what went wrong.

    This level of insight requires synthesis. Pull in patterns from interviews, call transcripts, and feedback. Don’t quote patients directly; interpret what their experiences reveal about system gaps or communication failures.

    Our platform supports this by letting teams attach emotions, needs, and blockers directly to journey stages. This keeps insights actionable, not buried in slide decks or research PDFs.

    Focus on patterns, not anecdotes. For each stage, try to define:

    • The patient’s goal

    • Their emotional state

    • What they need (and whether they got it)

    • What prevented success

    Here, human context meets system design. When you clearly show where expectations break down, you give your team the insight it needs to deliver meaningful, measurable change.

    6. Analyze the journey to find gaps and prioritize improvements 

    The value of a journey map comes from what you do with it. Use it to surface friction, identify root causes, and prioritize fixes that deliver impact.

    Look for gaps where the patient’s goals aren’t met. These might be moments of silence between stages, unclear handoffs, or redundant processes. The best opportunities often sit between owned channels, where no one team feels responsible.

    We make it easier to tag these gaps and connect them to broader themes across journeys. This turns isolated insights into strategic initiatives and enables teams to align work against shared goals.

    Don’t just list issues, score them. Consider:

    • How severe the issue is for patients

    • How often it occurs

    • What it costs the organization (time, money, trust)

    • How difficult it is to fix

    This helps stakeholders cut through noise and act. 

    Revisit your original journey goals. Use those as your filter for what matters. If the map doesn’t lead to change, it’s just decoration.

    Best practices for patient journey mapping

    Design for iteration, not perfection

    Don’t treat journey mapping as a one-time deliverable. This is because patients’ needs shift, service models evolve, and internal processes change.

    Build your maps with iteration in mind. That means creating a system where teams can revisit, update, and expand journeys as new data becomes available.

    Fortunately, TheyDo supports this by centralizing maps, personas, and insights in one shared workspace that’s easy to update without starting from scratch.

    Link journey insights to operations

    A journey map is only useful if it connects to how your business runs. That means tying insights directly to people, processes, or systems that can influence them.

    If a patient's pain point stems from a delayed handoff, link that moment to the scheduling team or internal system that owns it. This helps prioritize fixes and secure buy-in from the right stakeholders. 

    With platforms like TheyDo, teams can tag opportunities and align them with workflows already in motion, so that improvements don’t get stuck in a slide deck.

    Build a shared taxonomy

    In large organizations, different teams often create their own maps, labels, and definitions. That leads to misalignment and duplicate effort.

    A shared taxonomy solves this by giving everyone the same structure and language to describe journeys. It also makes it easier to compare journeys across patient types or service lines.

    Measure impact over time

    A good map helps you act, a great one helps you measure. Don’t just use journeys to visualize problems, use them to track impact.

    Did a process change reduce drop-offs? Did a new touchpoint improve adherence?

    Tie your map back to metrics. This shifts the value of mapping from insight to execution, and helps justify continued investment.

    Use the right type of journey map 

    Not all journey maps serve the same purpose. Use a current-state map to diagnose problems, a future-state map to guide innovation, and a service blueprint to align operational workflows. A day-in-the-life map can uncover behavioral patterns beyond clinical settings.

    Streamline patient journey mapping with theydo

    Mapping the patient journey helps teams in complex industries uncover friction, align faster, and drive smarter decisions. When done right, the patient journey map becomes a blueprint for measurable impact. That’s where we fit in.

    Our comprehensive journey management platform is built for organizations that need to deliver results across silos. With structured workflows, shared taxonomies, and powerful insights, we help teams map, manage, and improve patient experiences at scale.

    Start TheyDo for free today and build patient journeys that drive real outcomes.