If there’s one thing we can say with confidence after 20-plus years of working on healthcare patient portals, it’s this:
Most patient portals are often not built for patients.


The hard truth is that most healthcare patient portals are not built for patients first. They’re built for the cost-saving concerns of the business.

In our last post, we covered the [four problems that most healthcare patient portals face](https://drawbackwards.com/blog/healthcareux-4-common-problems-with-patient-portals "four problems that most healthcare patient portals face"). Now, it’s time for some solutions.

We’ve been working on healthcare websites, mobile apps and portals for more than 20 years and we’ve seen a lot of things go wrong. Here are four key ways that you can prevent your patients from getting lost in the vortex of a poorly designed and executed portal.

## Solution #1: Get to know your users
It seems obvious, but the best way to build a useful and effective portal is to put in the time and effort upfront to understand the real-world needs of each of your users. Most healthcare providers boil down their users to a few general user types - patients, physicians and employers or brokers - and don’t dig any deeper than that. 

But what about people who have accessibility issues? What about the health needs and technology expectations of different age groups? How does the user interface translate when a physician or their staff is moving from a tablet to a desktop and back again?

To encourage adoption and use, you need to know how to accommodate the needs of administrative staff looking for insurance information, patients looking for doctors, and physicians looking for in-depth health history. Then you need to find the edge use cases and build solutions to address those on the margins.

Taking the time to understand who you’re supporting with the portal and how you can best support their real-world needs will save you time redesigning it later when you find nobody is using it. 

## Solution #2: Don’t settle for the same old solutions
We’ve had many conversations with healthcare product teams who desperately want to improve their user experience but tell us there’s nothing they can do about the worst parts of that experience. Why? Because they’re forced to use third-party tools that give them no control over the UI or functionality.

Chances are that third-party tools are here to stay because there is just too much healthcare data for one organization to manage. But that doesn’t mean the tools have to feel like they came from the 90s. We’ve helped teams overcome many of the obstacles inherent in healthcare to find creative solutions that bring modern design principles to old tools and methods.

We do this by focusing on the small opportunities wherever they exist. You may not be able to completely build a new Find a Doctor tool from scratch. But what can you do to take the data from the existing tool and re-imagine how it’s presented? Can you challenge the status quo by requiring the developers of your third-party tools to offer better APIs with more UI customization?

By insisting on good tools and design principles wherever possible, you can begin to take back some of the control you’ve given up to these third-party tools and requirements and advocate for the needs of your users in the process. All it takes is the courage to break free from the functional and familiar to uncover the innovative and delightful.

## Solution #3: Resist the kitchen sink approach
Healthcare portals are designed to be many things for many people. But that doesn’t mean they should be all things for all people. It’s easy to think of all the features that could be included in a portal, but it’s much harder to think of the things that should be left out of it. That’s an even harder decision in healthcare, where there are regulations that make it impossible to eliminate certain options or features.

We’ve found the best approach to this is to sit down with the people who need to use your portal and understand what is most important to them on a daily basis. Identifying the two or three things that each user type needs the most will help you narrow in on the priorities that need to be available within one click (or less). 

Your portal is still likely to have a ton of features, some of which only get used occasionally, but by making the experience as good as possible for the features that are most important you’ll help users feel comfortable looking for and finding the other edge case features when they need them.

There will always be edge cases and one-off needs, but if you can knock out the most urgent and important actions and information needs you’ll be able to prioritize what is delivered to them in different contexts and on various devices.

## Solution #4: Take the journey with your users
Many healthcare patients don’t know where to begin when faced with a new portal they have to use. Many healthcare organizations don’t know where to begin in helping them navigate that journey.

That’s why it’s so important to map out the journey your users will be taking and find ways to be with them every step of the way. Help them understand the pieces that are confusing. Guide them to the next linear step or related features that they may not know about. Confirm the information they’ve submitted and clearly communicate to them where they’ve been, where they are and where they can go next.

In the rush to push out something basically functional and operational, most well-meaning healthcare providers and their product teams overlook the importance of seeing the entire forest for the trees. You need to understand the full journey so you can build the helpful moments that will get your users through that journey. Reduce friction as much as possible and the entire portal will feel new and innovative while remaining compliant with laws and regulations.

## Need a fresh take? We can help.
Our perspective on these challenges and solutions is not just a theoretical approach to an interesting problem. We’ve been in the weeds on these things working them out with organizations that want help getting to the next level in a highly restrictive regulatory environment.

We know how to navigate the complexity of healthcare portals to deliver simplicity that allows users to get what they need and feel good while doing it. Need a fresh perspective on your healthcare portal? Let’s [start a conversation](https://drawbackwards.com/contact "start a conversation") and see how we can combine efforts to deliver delight to all your users.


Healthcare UX

Healthcare UX: 4 Ways to Prevent Your Patient Portal from Becoming a Vortex

If there’s one thing we can say with confidence after 20-plus years of working on healthcare patient portals, it’s this:

Most patient portals are often not built for patients.

We’re not questioning the desire of healthcare companies to encourage patients to be more active in their healthcare. Most set out with the intention of creating safe, secure and easy access to things like immunization records, test results, and billing information.

But most fall well short of that goal.

Why? Because too often patient portals - like a lot of well-intended digital products - are built primarily for the business. They’re designed to fit within the lean budgets that product teams are given to create them, and not to meet the needs of the people who use them.

Add to that the complexity of healthcare regulations and user accessibility challenges, and you have a recipe for a tool that the average person dreads using.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are four problems that keep most healthcare patient portals from succeeding. Our next post will offer solutions that can help address these problems.

## Problem #1: Trying to be everything for everyone

Most patient portals we’ve worked on are also trying to be some combination of physician portals, staff portals, broker portals and employer portals. We get it - the idea is to spend precious time and resources building one central tool that everybody can use to get what they need.

The problem is that not everybody needs the same thing in the same order or with the same terminology. Physicians and their staff are conversant in highly technical terms and codes that patients find obscure and meaningless. Patients need simple plain-language menu items that lead them to exactly what they need to easily manage their account. 

The old adage that when you try to be everything to everyone you end up being nobody to no one is an apt description of many healthcare portals. There’s often no consistency in the navigation or site structure to help users find their way. The language and terminology ends up mixed and confusing for everyone. 

## Problem #2: Ceding control to third-party plug-ins

The worst UX problems we’ve encountered in healthcare patient portals haven’t been designed by the product team responsible for the portal. They’re usually the result of third-party plug-ins. 

Most healthcare companies don’t want to spend the money to build Find a Doctor or billing tools because it would be a herculean effort. So they give up control over a significant portion of their user experience to third-party tools that were designed to accommodate the lowest common denominator.

What they save in costs they lose in customer satisfaction and user experience. The tools and features that users need and want the most are often a one-size-fits-all solution that can’t adequately accommodate the needs of a variety of organizations and users.

## Problem #3: Not designing for mobile devices

Most patient portals we’ve seen have so much information they almost need a dual screen set-up to be effective. That’s not convenient in a world dominated by mobile devices. While many healthcare providers have adjusted to this new mobile reality, there is still plenty of work to be done.

Portals are meant to be a one-stop-shop for any number of actions users need to take or information they need to access. That doesn’t mean they need to give every potential action equal weight. Meeting users where they are in their journey with the right information at the right time is an art and a science and it needs to be done right to prevent information overload.

## Problem #4: Not providing help along the way

Healthcare patient portals are notoriously confusing and they’re just as equally known for not having effective help features. The most helpful tips and tricks arrive in the moment when you need them the most. Think of a password requirement notification that pops up as you type your password and indicates whether it will qualify or not before you click “Submit.”

That’s the type of helpful moment that can make or break a portal because it adds the delight that users need to feel comfortable with a digital product. Granted, some of these things can be hard to accomplish when taking into account ADA requirements and accessibility needs. 

But help doesn’t have to look fancy to be effective. A well-timed pop-up message in a large readable font can be just as elegant as a snazzy real-time password strength indicator.

## Don’t settle for the same old solutions.
We’ve seen too many healthcare providers settle for the quick digital solutions that provide the most basic experience necessary. They think they’re doing this to save money and put it into other areas that are more important for their patients. 

We might be biased, but we believe a clear, simple, secure and easy to use patient digital portal that encourages people to actively manage their health is about as important as almost anything outside of the doctor’s office.

If you’re looking for a partner to help you find your way to developing a better patient portal, [let’s talk](https://drawbackwards.com/contact "Let's Talk") about how we can apply our learnings and experience to your problems.

Work

Healthcare

Business to Consumer

Business to Business

Cybersecurity

Financial Services

Energy

Hospitality

Food & Beverage

Healthcare UX

Healthcare UX: 4 Common Problems with Patient Portals

Healthcare UX: 4 Ways to Prevent Your Patient Portal from Becoming a Vortex

Healthcare UX

Healthcare UX: 4 Common Problems with Patient Portals

Healthcare UX: 4 Ways to Prevent Your Patient Portal from Becoming a Vortex

Get monthly insights on innovation and UX.