Simplified Appointment Making (Johns Hopkins Medicine)

A significant part of my work is making complex scenarios simple, and understanding the best way to make an appointment with Johns Hopkins Medicine is anything but simple. It’s easy to be overloaded with the information in general, but while making decisions about your health, or that of a loved one, you can easily move from overloaded to overwhelmed.

Planning

What

What appointment making options are available and to whom are they available?

Why

There are many different ways to schedule or request an appointment, and not all options are available to everyone. With many possibilities, many callouts have been created over time. In an effort to simplify decision making during site build, and to make it easier for patients to get appointments, we need to consolidate our callouts into one or two callouts that cover all scenarios.

Research goals

Determine:

  • User types

  • Appointment making options for each user type

  • User flows for each user type and scenario combination

  • Where paths overlap in order to consolidate callouts

Recommend:

  • A data-driven (connected to databases) callout(s) to cover all needs

  • A non-data-driven solution that can immediately be put in place

Anticipated outcomes

While this is a complex system with many user paths, it’s likely that many of the paths converge. It’s necessary to know all the paths, but creating a consolidated callout is be possible.

Method

  • Simultaneously research user types and appointment making options per user type by:

    • Reviewing current callouts, specialty appointment making pages, and MyChart for all options

    • Discuss options with service line content editors

  • Document user flows for each user type and scenario combination

  • Recommend consolidated callouts based on findings

    • One should be connected to databases to dynamically present links to exact locations within MyChart and phone numbers based on their needs, when these options are available

    • One should be recommended for immediate use that simplifies appointment making options but does not require database connections, links to main tools like MyChart and editable phone number fields are needed

Outcome

A simplified callout was created that combines the details of all possible scenarios and includes the needed information to present all options to each type of user. It also satisfies the business objectives of directing users to online resources whenever it’s most efficient for them, limiting call center overload and deferring work to technology when possible.