Mercy:
First Available Scheduling Tool
Roles: UX Management, Design, Strategy, Architecture, Research
Date: 2020-2022
'Scheduling Overhaul' is a multi-stage re-imagining of Mercy's digital scheduling capabilities. Upon completion, it will create a single-source scheduling system that sits behind every part of our website. Allowing patients to enter the same smart system no matter what point in the process they choose to schedule from.
- Provide a guided, quick-entry scheduling hub
- Assisting patients that may not already have a provider in mind, or may not be as confident in using our more robust search
- Present appointments by first-available so patients can get in as soon as possible
- Utilize Epic's APIs to build our own front-end UI and remove the iFrame components
- Establishing consistency from start to finish
- Allowing more complete tracking and analytics of scheduling funnels
- Giving us full access to test, optimize, and personalize
Initial Research & Baseline Testing:
The scheduling funnel has a broad audience; needing to be accessible to users of all backgrounds and proficiencies. We completed extensive baseline usertesting as well as market surveys and competitive research.
Overall Findings:
- Across all age groups, time-to-appointment was a significant point of friction. Being able to find a doctor with availability within 7 days without checking individual profiles was a highly sought after feature
- Location of appointment was also a highly ranked determining factor for appointment and doctor choice
- In our previous scheduling process, appointment type selection was overwhelming and placed too much responsibility on a patient to know which appointment was appropriate
01. Landing Page
Goals:
- Provide one-click entry points into most-used specialty scheduling
- Personalize experience for authenticated users
- Presenting easy care-team scheduling access
- Pre-filling known insurance information
- Personalization opportunities to promote annual care reminders, screenings, etc.
- Future phases will introduce 'Care Navigation' tool, which will suggest most appropriate care paths
02. Search Results
Goals:
- Group appointments by location, and first available time slot
- Reduce information shown on doctor 'cards' and available filters from full search, to simplify decision-making
- Introduce dynamic scrolling interactions on mobile to maintain grouping and prevent getting 'lost' in the scroll of results
- Show selection of next-available time slots*
- *In future phases of API development, time slots will be clickable
