James McMahon, Vice President of Marketing Communications at University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), teamed up with Steve Koch, Managing Partner at Cast & Hue to explore how cancer patients actually experienced their care. Their goal was to reshape operations and messaging using what they heard directly from patients as well as staff.

Key Takeaways

Journey maps can enhance what patients love. When done right, patient journey maps can highlight the people and processes that patients love. Organizations should not be afraid to double-down on those in addition to fixing what is broken. Patients AND staff must be involved. It is critical to have a representative cross section of patients, not just your best ones, involved in creating the journey map. Staff are also vital to uncover blind spots. Patients want good experiences not just clinical prowess. Through the journey mapping process, UMMC discovered that patients appreciated compassionate care as much as the medical credentials of their care team. Let What’s Working Lead the Way

Journey maps are good for identifying pain points. They are also good for spotlight aspects of your operations worth amplifying. At UMMC, the process uncovered areas where staff were quietly overdelivering on patient connection.

“The priority areas aren’t just the areas that you have the deficiencies,” explained McMahon. “Certainly you’ll find value in that information, but there are also opportunities where you have peaks in the journey and you really want to leverage those.”

By focusing on strengths as much as fixes, UMMC built momentum for its patient experience and transformation efforts. It also boosted morale knowing that the organization had many strengths hidden in plain sight.

Involve Real Patients and the People Who Support Them

Many health systems skip patient interviews to save time. Others rely on patient advisory board members or internal proxies who have been in the role for many years. Both shortcuts miss the mark.

“No matter what you do, ensure you get authentic patients,” said Koch. “Let’s not go to [patient advisory boards]. They are going to have their biases because they’ve been sharing their input with you for years. Instead, let’s talk to patients who perceived care recently. They can help pinpoint the best opportunity for us to improve our experience.”
At a prior organization, McMahon used journey maps to improve high-traffic entry points. Those maps helped ensure the first impression carried through to seamless handoffs across care teams.

Compassion Left a Bigger Mark Than Credentials

At an academic medical center, clinical excellence is a given. But when patients reflected on their care experience, the most memorable aspect was the warmth of the care team, not their credentials.

“We kept hearing that everybody was delivering compassionate care,” shared McMahon.

That finding helped shape UMMC’s new go to market strategy which includes messaging around compassionate care along with clinical expertise. That insight helped UMMC sharpen its go-to-market strategy in a city where clinical excellence is expected, but compassion makes the difference.

As McMahon put it, “Every person that the patient interacted with was genuinely interested in their wellbeing—from the parking attendant all the way to the last person they saw walking out the building.”

Learn more about University of Maryland Medical Center at https://www.umms.org/ummc

Learn more about Cast & Hue at https://www.castandhue.com/