Simplee is a B2B company that offers a software platform to healthcare providers for patient financial care. Their technology creates a modern and user-friendly billing and payment experience to engage patients on financial responsibility.

Our healthcare providers requested improvements to the existing billing/payment system in terms of ease of use and financial transparency. They asked for solutions that could help patients understand their financial obligations prior to receiving service and avoid any surprises in their medical bills.

How can we provide greater billing transparency and engage patients in their financial responsibility early on?

KIck off

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Based on our analysis of previous research and data gathered from more than 10 providers, we discovered the top two contributing factors to customer and patient dissatisfaction that need to be addressed were:

1. Time consuming and inconvenient payment processes for patients.

2. Unpaid balances and the need for the costly process of staff-assisted collections for health care providers. 

Ideation

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With the two major user needs above in mind, we started brainstorming several user cases and scenarios. Multiple whiteboard sessions and paper sketches were conducted to lay out a variety of different concepts to pick from.

We realized that all of our generated concepts could be categorized in three major product directions. This led us to creating a new concept that incorporated all three solutions in one product. We called it Pre-Service.

adding pre-service to the User Flow

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Pre-Service shows the costs associated with the patients’ upcoming visit as soon as they are done with the self check-in process. It also provides different payment plan options for the patients’ convenience. Alternatively, the “Pay when I arrive” option was added in case the patient prefers to skip this section and make a selection upon arrival at the care facility.

Design Decision

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Card design

In order to create a minimal, easy to understand, and relatively less time-consuming design for users, we decided to use a card-like design that allowed us to depict the information in the front and back of the card. By selecting an option, to card flips over to display more details. This configuration enables users to stay on the same page instead of navigating to another page as they review different options.

User Scenarios

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We then started to explore different cases based on the patients’ propensity to make an initial payment upfront. For these scenarios, we assumed that the users had already completed the online self check-in process and were reviewing the cost estimate of the service they will receive. 

Scenario 1

Full Payment: Patient has a high propensity of making a full payment upfront

We purposely made the full payment as the default option when patients get to the “See Payment Options” to encourage it as its the preferred option for the healthcare providers. 

Scenario 2

Create a payment plan: Patient has a low propensity to pay in full and wants to consider alternative options

We enabled the first time users to create a payment plan and provided them with two payment options to choose from. We also allowed them to select their desired pay day for each month. 

Scenario 3

Add Balance to Existing Payment Plan: User previously created a payment plan and desires to add the new costs to the same plan

Our solution recognizes the returning users who have already created a payment plan and allows them to keep adding a new balance to their existing plan. We simply displayed a comparison of the existing balance and the new balance along with the updated monthly payments.

Usability testing & validation

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We then decided to conduct an on-site usability testing and recruit the participants externally for the new product. The purpose of this testing was to gather patient insights, assess the usability of the product (Self check-in and Pre-service), and the most importantly, measure how and why people would be willing to pay or commit in advance.

As I was responsible for recruiting the participants, I sat with my manager to write the recruitment screener and came up with the list of question that would help us filtering the potential users. To find the participants, I posted an invitation Ad to participate to our study on craigslist. The Ad consisted a short description of our intention for the study, the requirements and incentive amount for participation. Then I Interviewed the potential users and scheduled them for user testing session.

Demographic

People aging 25-60 years old who have been recently visited a hospital or clinic and received a hospital bill afterwards.

The day of testing

During Simplee’s product testing on a mobile device (iphone X), we recorded audio and video of 9 participants while they used the live prototype of the self check-in and . After each session we conducted an interview with each person. In order for our participants better understand the task, we prepared the below scenario.

“You injured your back and went to the doctor. The doctor has requested an MRI - Lumbar Spine and recommended you to go to “X” Hospital. You contact the Hospital, schedule a visit and receive an email to check-in online prior to your visit. We want to bring you through the process of self check-In and payment.”