Service blueprints are used to depict what the ideal patient journey looks like and identify ways to improve it for the end user. However, to be able to draw a service blueprint, we first need to make sense of the patient journey itself.
How do the best healthcare companies improve their patient journeys?
Understanding the patient’s journey
Understanding the patient journey is critical for two reasons. One, because it helps healthcare providers identify touch points in their service where they can better engage with their patients and two, this allows a more efficient exchange of information.
The key to creating an effective service blueprint is in understanding not only the patient journey but the ever-changing patient demands as well. Patients are now acting as consumers with high expectations for greater access to services, more convenience and more choice. So understanding the patient journey will show the blind spots in your systems and with the help of technology enable you to improve patient experiences, achieve greater outcomes and attain higher conversions.
What is a service blueprint?
A service blueprint is an illustration, usually in the form of a diagram, which comprehensively documents the journey a user/customer/patient will take when engaging with a service. This will include touchpoints with various systems, processes showing the exchange of information, handoffs between different actors within the journey and critically allows companies to identify pain points on which to focus.
At MyPulse, in order to add value, we rely on service blueprints to help us design better systems. We use them to map out ‘as is’ journeys and to plan what the journey should look like in a ‘to-be’ state. As a result our clients can visualise how the patient experience will change.
We follow four steps as part of the service blueprint framework when helping our clients digitally transform their businesses.
1. As a scoping tool
First of all, we determine the scope of the project: we aim to understand how your current systems work, understand your patient needs and how current KPIs are determined and measured. Our technology and product teams collaborate with a wide group of business stakeholders to determine the responsibilities of each party.
2. Aid discovery
We then go through a discovery stage where we conduct research with your clinical and non-clinical stakeholders to capture the incumbent framework.
If we determine that you may require multiple integration points, call this work out early so that both parties can support this work in good time. During this step we talk to a broad group of stakeholders including customer service teams, marketing, compliance, product, tech and leadership to achieve maximum transparency and engagement. Their views help us gain insights that can lead to greater effectiveness of new solutions often beyond the scope of a project.
3. Map the ideal journey
We then organise a half-day workshop where we collaboratively build the service blueprint, drafting your ideal patient journey and how we digitally support this. By working together, we can remove certain unnecessary steps from your current journey and reimagine a service without them.
The service blueprint process is designed to be time efficient. We aim to map a complete journey within a one day workshop and then present it back within a week. They can also be conducted with a lot of flexibility. We can run really effective sessions remotely, using tools like Miro or whiteboard sessions.
4. Plan on a page
By the end, you will receive a one page document that will illustrate what the go-to architecture could look like. This plan on a page shows that we understand the cross-functional efforts required to offer our solution and can provide you with an overall map for how the patient flows through the services and seamlessly between systems and solutions, which may be hosted by us, third parties or you, our client.
Conclusion
Service blueprints are an integral part of our product development cycle.
At MyPulse, we think that the basis of any product strategy should be about enhancing business value and patient experience. We take a helicopter view, zoom in and out as required and comprehensively capture internal and external functions to determine the best implementation approach.
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