2021-2023
ALLINA HEALTH
Transforming patient care & scheduling through user-centered design
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PROJECT OVERVIEW
CHALLENGE
Allina Health is a midwestern-based not for profit healthcare system operating 12 hospitals and 90+ clinics and speciality care and is known for its commitment to patient-centered care and cutting edge innovation. This premier care for patients wasn't translating to their digital care experiences and especially during and after COVID. Allina had to rethink their entire digital strategy to match the expectations patients had for finding and scheduling care.
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OBJECTIVE
Our team was brought in to better understand the expectations of the patients and to meet and exceed those expectations and experiences. Additionally we had to balance stakeholder priorities, provider desires, developer capacities and a changing landscape. Patient outcomes, increases in online scheduling and care and increases in NPS (Net Promoter Scores) were all measured through analytics.
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UX Manager
(Managed 4+ Product Designers, UX Research)
Responsive Web
Authenticated + Unauthenticated
10+ Month Project
The process
PERSONA DEVELOPMENT, JOURNEY MAPPING
We focussed on Allina's core persona, Priority Juggler for our MVP experience taking into consideration research that had been done that maps to how they make a decision when scheduling an appointment. Using that information we started to ask how could we create an experience for patients or their caregivers that answered "What I Need" first.
IN PERSON WORKSHOPPING
Our combined teams met and white boarded different options. We focussed on How Might We (HWM) exercises to get to an agreed understanding.
MVP
Taking what we learned by in person workshopping we created a user flow and started to build out features that were essential for MVP.
MVP DESIGN PROTOTYPE & USER TESTING
Once all the stakeholders agreed we began to create designs that we could test with users to get initial feedback on that mapped back to the MVP goals.
Heat mapping on a prototype allowed us to see where a user would go naturally when asked to make an appointment.
ANALYTICS ARE A KEY PART OF THE PROCESS
After the MPV experience went live, we monitored closely where the clicks were coming from and if users (patients / caregivers) were able to successfully make an appointment. Analytics told us we had a HUGE problem - users were getting hung up and abandoned the experience when asked to log in.
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18,000 clicks (2 different paths) attempting to find an appointment only netted 500+ online appointments or 5% of users had success.
We quickly responded and began mapping a new flow that put the log in experience AFTER patients had secured an appointment. Once we worked with stakeholders and developers to understand the impacts to the flow and how to capture the data, we tested again. This time our testing showed users had no issues with the new flow.
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Most importantly when we went back to the analytics with a new scheduling experience - now 60% of users completed the flow a huge WIN.
DESIGN EVOLUTION
One of the most compelling reasons patients are loyal to Allina Health is the sheer number of care type options that are available. We made the experience simple by offering an assessment for those who needed to make sense of the different options (online vs in person or care type, for example). At the same time, the MVP scheduling experience began to morph and was applied to more scheduling types. We design the experience to be available in the Allina Health app. Whichever place you started (directly into scheduling or via the assessment) ultimately ended you with the ability to make an appointment.