Signage solutions: The role of hospital wayfinding in enhancing visitor and patient experience

While often overlooked, wayfinding can have a real and tangible impact on a hospital’s bottom line.

For visitors of virtually every type, a hospital trip usually coincides with a period of stress. When patients arrive at a hospital and can’t easily find the clinic or office they’re looking for, those stress levels can rise. Understandably, this can have far-reaching consequences for the patients, frontline staff, and the hospital’s bottom line.

When the patient experience is seamless thanks to effective wayfinding, patients and their families feel cared for and prioritized. For front-line healthcare workers, already stretched thin in today’s do-more-with-less healthcare environment, this means fewer complaints and a reduction in time-consuming interactions resulting from people getting lost in a hospital’s labyrinth of hallways.

Wayfinding can even help elevate a hospital’s brand in a crowded healthcare marketplace, over time leading to good reviews, positive word-of-mouth, and solid ROI. By incorporating wayfinding strategies in 2025, healthcare providers can invest in future patient experience, transforming navigation into a critical component of compassionate, stress-reducing care.

Developing an effective wayfinding strategy

With clarity as the goal, a comprehensive wayfinding strategy will generally consider 5 major decision points interspersed along that journey.

1. Pre-visit communications

First impressions count, which is why any wayfinding strategy starts before a visitor enters a facility. Optimizing pre-visit communications might include tactics like giving prominence to location, direction, or parking information on a hospital’s website, emails, texts, or call center scripts. As a baseline, patients, potential patients, and visitors should know exactly what they’re looking for and where to find it before arrival.

2. Facility exteriors and reception

Once a patient or visitor reaches a hospital or clinic, they confront a series of decisions starting at site entry to parking and front entrance. Particularly in large complex hospital campuses, they will want to know the most efficient route to enter and find parking closest to the entrance of their appointment. Items to consider at this phase might include

• Parking signage
• Pedestrian walkway signage
• Entrance and patient drop-off points
• Site identification signage
• Directional signage

Once inside the facility, wayfinding at reception will play a crucial role in setting the stage for the overall patient experience. An assessment of the reception area takes into account everything from welcome banners to entrance signs to digital maps and more.

3. Interior wayfinding

The interior landscape of most hospitals is immense. Moving beyond reception, patients might find themselves navigating hallways, between floors, through tunnels to annexes and clinics, and more. If internal wayfinding is unclear, patients can quickly become lost, which in a healthcare setting can have dire and immediate consequences.

An assessment of interior wayfinding might include collecting data on:

• The brand experience inside the facility
• Major patient journey routes
• Primary and secondary direction signs that guide people along various routes within the hospital
• Landmarks, architectural features, and branded environments for navigational cues
• Directories and maps at key transition points like elevators or staircases

4. Destination

Visitors should feel a sense of arrival and clarity when they reach their destination. Often in crowded hospital settings where one hallway door looks like another, what may seem clear to staff might be confusing or disorienting to an overwhelmed or anxious visitor.

Consider questions like:

• Are clinic doorways clearly marked?
• Are waiting areas, especially those shared among clinics, clearly defined?
• Are staff regularly receiving questions from patients confirming they’ve arrived?

5. Exit

Finally, once a patient’s treatment or visit concludes, visitors must find their way back out of the hospital or to the next clinic or procedural location. This is the last in-person interaction the patient will have which often leave a lasting impression.

Visitors heading home will need clearly defined routes to exits and parking areas. Those navigating from one appointment to another within the same facility, like from imaging to a fracture clinic, will need transition signage to help navigate their way.

One-size-fits-all doesn’t apply

Once an assessment is finished, a wayfinding strategy can be drafted and implemented. Since no two hospitals are alike, a custom solution is the only way forward. That said, navigating healthcare spaces evokes similar feelings across patient and visitor groups. A customized plan should take into consideration the following unique aspects of any site:

• The scale and type of facility – Size and scope matters. While employing many of the same principles, a plan for a single clinic or large multi-building campus will be radically different.
• Bottlenecks – When time is of the essence and every minute and dollar counts, bottlenecks must be resolved as quickly and efficiently as possible. Wayfinding can ensure that visitors aren’t unnecessarily congregating in high-traffic zones and keep traffic moving.
• Implementation – To phase or not to phase? Depending on the scope and scale, a phased implementation plan may ensure a seamless transition from old to new. This might mean first updating primary traffic routes with additional updates to secondary routes or destination signage along the way.
• Branding – Branding can also play a crucial role in streamlining the patient experience. A hospital system may want each of its hospitals and clinics to look the same to build familiarity that can help patients navigate any facility in the network. What’s more, when branding is continually reinforced, visitors receive navigational confirmation every time they see a sign.

Putting it all together

As healthcare systems continue to evolve, those that prioritize intuitive, compassionate navigation will distinguish themselves in a competitive marketplace. Effective wayfinding is an investment in both patient experience and operational efficiency, transforming potentially stressful hospital visits into moments of clarity and support. By viewing wayfinding as a holistic strategy rather than a mere signage problem, healthcare providers can create environments that not only guide patients physically but also provide emotional reassurance during vulnerable moments.

If you’re about to embark on a wayfinding exercise at your hospital or clinic, we’d love to point you in the right direction. Let’s talk.