Demand for a seamless patient experience drove this health system to innovate—and led to 5x faster results

Our Impact 

Our client, a mid-sized health system in a top-five metropolitan area, wanted to establish itself as a digital leader. It came to the right place.  

In 6 months, our multidisciplinary team has worked with the health system to: 

• Establish its vision and strategy for becoming a digital leader 
• Define the patient experience and the operating model required to make it happen 
• Design and build initial elements of a differentiated digital experience 
• Develop a plan of action for future enhancements  

Better yet, our work mobilized the health system for change faster – so it can realize benefits sooner. 

The Full Story 

The Opportunity  

In addition to clinical excellence, today’s healthcare consumers expect seamless, intuitive digital experiences that are personal and empathetic. Executives recognized that being able to deliver such an experience produces positive business outcomes: strengthened quality, increased share of care, new patient acquisition, lower call volumes and in-person utilization for low-acuity needs, and higher patient satisfaction and Net Promoter® scores. The organization was ready to take a bold step toward becoming the digital leader in its marketplace. That’s where we came in.  

An Undeniably Different Approach 

We brought an approach purpose-built for driving digital innovation at the speed of a startup. That starts with our multidisciplinary approach. We paired extensive health system experience with digital expertise and deep technologists. This allowed us to look at the organization’s goals and challenges from all necessary perspectives. It also ensured we could support the health system not only with developing its strategy but also bringing it to life.   

During “iteration zero,” we collaborated with the health system to create a vision for evolving the patient experience and a strategy that instilled confidence and secured investment to move forward. Together, we defined the key traits of a future patient experience – principles such as proactive, personalized rather than standardized, choice (scheduled or on-demand, in-person or digital), and reduced effort. We generated ideas for streamlining scheduling, shifting emphasis from sick care to well care through effective health coaching, empowering patients with information, and creating warm hand-offs and smooth transitions between primary care physicians and specialists. And we explored how a virtual assistant could welcome consumers and be at the ready to answer their questions and provided personalized guidance to care options.  Then, we defined the initial “product,” the enhancements and new features that will follow, and the technical architecture necessary to make it happen.  

Finally, we employed proven agile capabilities for building the new patient experience in phases, with key workstreams focused on:  

• Embedding the desired patient experience into mobile, website, and in-clinic channels 
• Developing new capabilities such as secure chat, patient profiles, provider search, telehealth, and virtual triage  
• Creating modern infrastructure that connects Epic, eVariant, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, financial, and other systems 

Outcomes

• Journey maps detailing the experience for key users, such as “new to the system,” “long-time patient,” and “self-directed patient” 
• Product definition for an initial release, as well as a backlog of more than 160 features  
• High-fidelity designs/prototypes, developed through two-week sprints that incorporated user feedback from prototype testing, surveys, interviews, and user intercepts or observations 
• Design elements, including branding, typography, icons, color, buttons, etc.  
• A plan of action for evolving the patient experience, delivered in phases to accelerate the benefits for both consumers and the health system 
• Technical architecture, following guiding principles such as secure and private connections, 24/7/365 patient access, keeping users in the app, and support for analytics 

Real Results

By embedding new ways of working – iterative, agile, user-focused – we were able to help fundamentally change employee mindsets, leaving the health system in a better position to continue on its digital journey. With our guidance, the system mobilized to begin making the transformation in just five to six months – significantly faster than the typical mobilization period of 21 to 30 months.