The Role of Patient Journey Mapping in Access Programs

For pharmaceutical companies, an effective patient access strategy starts with an in-depth understanding of the patient journey, insight that needs to be as broad in scope as it is nuanced in evaluation, all while maintaining an eye to the horizon for future developments.

In this context, detailed patient journey maps provide an invaluable tool, but generating them is a multi-faceted analytical challenge.

Below, we explain the fundamentals of patient journey mapping, outline its importance for pharmaceutical access programs, and explore some practical methodological foundations for building a quality map.

What is a Patient Journey Map?

The patient journey describes the full sequence of events that unfolds when an individual first develops a need for care. Unlike narrower patient experience metrics, the patient journey spans all touchpoints: researching healthcare options, booking appointments, navigating billing, managing treatment, and maintaining long-term health after the initial episode of care.

A patient journey map is a visual tool that captures this continuum of interactions, illustrating how a patient’s relationship with a healthcare organization evolves across multiple stages:

1. Pre-visit awareness and education
2. Initial contact and appointment scheduling
3. Diagnosis and treatment
4. Post-visit adherence and lifestyle modifications
5. Ongoing care and follow-up

A systematic, evidence-based map of this journey allows stakeholders to gain a holistic view of the patient experience. This perspective helps pinpoint barriers and friction points across both internal processes and external factors. Patient journey maps may reveal broad barriers to access for entire therapeutic categories, or they may be focused on the unique nuances of a highly specific patient population. For example, this research from the Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases shows how a mapping process helped understand critical barriers along the treatment journey of cervical dystonia patients.

Crucially, not all touchpoints carry the same impact for patient access. Identifying the moments when patients are most vulnerable to gaps in access (whether financial, logistical, or clinical) is essential for improving outcomes. Collecting feedback and analyzing patient perceptions across the entire journey helps uncover these access choke points to shape more targeted interventions.

Key Elements of Effective Patient Journey Maps

Carefully executed patient journey mapping should generate actionable insights that inform strategies to enhance healthcare experiences and outcomes. These improvements can be applied at the individual patient level, in the design of care models, or across broader health systems.

At its core, journey mapping is about capturing the full range of experiences and interactions that shape a patient’s path to care. This includes specific service touchpoints (like scheduling an appointment, receiving a diagnosis, or starting treatment), systemic pain points (such as delays, coverage denials, or complicated authorization steps), and emotional experiences along the way (the anxiety, frustration, or relief that accompany different phases of care). Systematically tracking these different dimensions helps focus on concrete examples of how patients engage with healthcare systems and where breakdowns are most likely to occur. 

Structurally, a patient journey map typically includes:

• A timeline of patient actions and interactions
• Key decision points and milestones
• The stakeholders involved at each step (e.g., providers, payers, specialty pharmacies)
• Operational or administrative processes that influence progress
• Metrics to gauge gaps between expected and actual experiences

In our experience, the value of quality patient journey maps is readily apparent to most healthcare and pharmaceutical professionals. The real challenge lies in execution: nuanced, actionable maps require a purposeful development methodology.

Building Patient Journey Maps to Inform Pharmaceutical Access Strategy

Patient journey maps help pharmaceutical companies design smarter, more effective programs, from shaping the development of new therapies to supporting the refinement of patient support initiatives. Journey mapping strengthens patient-centric access strategies by generating insights that lead to tangible improvements for activation, access, affordability, and adherence.

Methodology: How to Build a Patient Journey Map

At TJP, our journey mapping process has been refined over decades to capture a complete view of the patient’s experience from diagnosis through fulfillment and beyond. Through focused working sessions that simulate each stage of the journey, we uncover critical insights that guide service design and enable ongoing optimization after launch. This approach ensures we identify potential pain points that could hinder access to therapy.

Robust journey maps start with patient personas, which capture key demographics (such as age, gender, location), medical goals, pain points, and behaviors. In the pharmaceutical context, each persona should be anchored to a clear therapy-related goal, whether that’s gaining access to a new treatment, achieving symptom relief, or managing a chronic condition.

In our experience, patient maps will generate the most value when they engage with a breadth of perspectives encapsulated in four distinct methodological approaches, shown below.

Current-State Evaluation

This journey map is designed to provide a snapshot of how things are today. It depicts patient engagement and is designed to show the strengths and weaknesses of the experience.

Day-in-the-Life Analysis

Designed to highlight everything a patient thinks, feels, and does during a day. It's not limited by the product; it should include everything within and outside of their healthcare journey.

Future-State Projection

The future state journey is a significant part of forward-thinking patient focus. It is designed to highlight innovation and bold ideas for improvement.

Service Blueprint

The service blueprint isn’t a journey map in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s a top-down look at the administrative tools and systems required to deliver a positive patient experience.

Key Knowledge Sources for Patient Journey Maps

experience. The goal is not to map healthcare systems, but to empathize with the nuances of how patients navigate their care journey, ideally in their own words and on their own terms. Building out the requisite knowledge requires a comprehensive process for gathering inputs from a variety of different sources.

A typical process includes:

• Clinician input: Map the clinical pathway for a given therapy, detailing the formal steps of diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up. 
• Patient experience: Incorporate real-world patient perspectives (which may be synthesized from CRM data, surveys, and interviews) to reveal how patients actually move through these steps.
• Pathway variation: Identify and document the different routes patients may take within the healthcare system, recognizing that journeys often diverge based on payer requirements, site-of-care factors, or individual circumstances.
• Gap and pain point analysis: Pinpoint missing steps, breakdowns, and barriers within the journey. Use these insights to develop targeted solutions that ease patient burdens and improve access.
• Ongoing refinement: Patient journeys evolve. Regularly revisit and update your maps as you collect new feedback and uncover fresh insights.

From Map to Game Plan: Translate Patient Journey Insight into Patient Access Wins

A detailed patient journey map is the foundation, not the output, of an effective pharmaceutical patient access strategy. ROI for an in-depth mapping process can be realized only by taking strategic action that improves access, satisfaction, and outcomes.

The visual nature of journey maps makes it easier to spot gaps and pain points, offering a clear roadmap for targeted improvements. Whether it’s simplifying prior authorization processes, streamlining onboarding at the site of care, or refining patient communications, journey mapping helps pinpoint exactly where to focus efforts for maximum impact.

Strategically, mapping uncovers unmet needs that can guide the development of new support initiatives or identify opportunities to strengthen existing ones. It ensures your patient access programs remain dynamic and responsive to patient realities.

Finally, journey maps drive cross-functional alignment, helping teams prioritize initiatives and work collaboratively toward shared patient access goals.

Integrate Patient Journey Maps with a Comprehensive Market Access Strategy

Access barriers can make or break a therapy’s success, and patient journey mapping is both a diagnostic tool and a strategic engine for building smarter, more patient-centered access solutions.

By weaving journey mapping into a broader market access strategy, pharmaceutical brands can better anticipate patient needs, close critical gaps in access, and strengthen engagement across the entire care continuum. 

Want to leverage journey mapping to enhance your access strategy? Contact TJP to explore how our patient-centric approach can help your brand overcome barriers and deliver meaningful results.