Overview

Before this project, Clinical Navigators completed every patient intake by phone. Our Navigators are licensed Physical Therapists. Their time is valuable but not scalable, so how do we allow them to focus on eligible and high-value patients while still getting ineligible patients an intake and a pathway to follow?

TailorCare staff needs help handling increased patient volumes, particularly those referred to us but ineligible for our services. Being eligible allows us to perform revenue-generating activities with this patient.

The Team & My Role

• The SVP of Product, Director of Product Management, Lead Architect, and I collaborated to validate our ideas and draft a one-pager.
• I also worked with our Clinical Operations Manager on all patient-facing questions and changes.
• I designed the entire UI/UX and visual design to prepare the product for launch.

Goals & KPIs

• Decrease Navigator time spent with ineligible patients by 75%
• Increase Navigator time spent with high-value patients by 50%
• Maintain an NPS score above 85

Where We Started

We started this entirely from scratch; it is a new product line.

To meet the company's goals of engaging patients likely to have surgery and helping them avoid unnecessary surgeries, we need to engage more patients overall. Through workshops, we learned from primary care providers that they prefer to refer their entire musculoskeletal panel without pre-screening for eligibility. To handle that many referrals, we need a no-navigator option for our care model, where interaction with expensive TailorCare Navigators is not required or minimal.

During planning, I created flows and mockups to get Engineering up to speed and enable them to start sizing tickets.

We created a user flow from the initial interaction with TailorCare through all touchpoints, backend triggers, etc.

Research

I used usertesting.com to reach the age range of patients who would be using our product, and tested a Figma prototype to get unfiltered feedback on body part selection, how easy the questions were to understand, and the recommendations provided.

Users appreciated the overall ease of use of the intake, but they struggled to understand the intent behind specific medical questions.

• User #5 had difficulty understanding some questions on the first read and had to reread them: "Can you bend or straighten your knee without pain of any kind, unrelated to pain or movement?"
• User #2 noted that it may be good to provide a middle option when asking if the knee is red or hot to the touch. His knee was warm but not red, so he selected no.

Intake Question Clarity

The questions our Navigators used during phone calls were too medically complex for patients. Without a certified Physical Therapist on the phone, we needed them to be more explicit and literal. Working with the Chief Medical Officer, Head of Marketing, and staff Physical Therapists, we simplified the more difficult questions into something the layperson could understand.

Testers still found some questions too confusing, so I passed the feedback to the Clinical Operations Manager for a more patient-friendly version. I also added images, icons, and explainers so patients could understand why we were asking particular questions.

Our Initial Approach & Iterations

Initially, we assumed that older users would access our intake via desktop and receive it via email. Due to contractual obligations, we pivoted to a phone number and text-based delivery system.

I created the first desktop design with our initial assumptions.

The pivot to a mobile-first optimized intake assessment.

What Was Done

As we continued to work on the product, we lovingly started using Minimum Lovable Product instead of Minimum Viable Product within the team, as we would only have one chance to make a great first impression with these patients. Our list of must-haves includes:

• Secure access that works within HIPAA and is unique to each patient
• A care pathway, provider recommendations, and the info needed to book with a downstream partner
• A reminder prompt when a patient doesn't finish the assessment

The Results

Healthcare is complex, but we aimed to remove as many annoyances as possible. Patients now complete the intake on their own in plain language, filter providers by location, language, specialty and condition, get a care pathway and provider recommendations, and can call a provider to book.

Research showed that choosing their provider preferences is essential to patients.

Providers near the patient, with a quick way to call them for scheduling.

Selecting a body part right at the beginning let us tailor questions immediately to that body part.

Patients need to rate pain and function quickly so we can show progress. We are continuing to test different methods for this.

Images and more straightforward language for the more complicated questions.

Achieved Goals & KPIs

• We decreased Navigator time spent with ineligible patients by 60%.
• We increased Navigator time spent with high-value patients by 15%.
• We reached an NPS in the low 80s (target above 85).

Measured with analytics from Clinical Operations over the 3 months after launch.

What's Next?

Next, we want to take on more company goals and save more Navigator time, so Navigators can make genuine, lasting connections with patients. The team decided to deprioritize some goals due to complexity:

1. Letting patients filter providers by insurance coverage. The product manager and I considered this, but finding companies to verify insurance and matching it to providers was too heavy a lift for our timeline.
2. Multiple languages. It wasn't within the time frame we had, and English served the majority of our population at the time.
3. Letting Navs place patients on the self-serve path, and letting patients speak with a Navigator while on the self-care path.