Problem Background
Patient Contact Centers around the US are vital in facilitating patient care coordination, whether it be through scheduling appointments, connecting people to specialty care providers, or providing access points for customers to the clinical system. One of the PCC’s primary responsibilities is processing referrals, or requests from a Primary Care Physician (PCP) to a specialist to assess a patient’s condition or accept him/her as a new patient. However, a complicated network of insurance systems, disconnected processing steps, disparate communication tools, and a general lack of public understanding around the referral process have generated frustration within the patient population, who often feel uniformed, abandoned and desperate as they seek the specialty care they need.
Proposed Solution
The MyReferral Navigator tool addresses this issue by providing patients with clear, real-time updates regarding the status of their referral(s), including a “red light/green light” feature that gives the referred individual a clear, color-coded indication of their referrals’ progress. Patients may use MyReferral Navigator to view anticipated appointment dates, the status of their insurance claims and inquiries, and any outstanding tasks or forms to be completed by them or their PCP. To ensure that patients feel as informed as possible, users have the option to receive text alerts sent from the MyReferral Navigator tool to their phones before receiving a call from the PCC to alert them that their referral has been processed.
Healthcare Innovation CIC Takes on Initial Prototyping
The Healthcare Innovation CIC worked closely with a leading medical center in the US to develop an impactful prototype highlighting how the referral processes can be reimagined.
Storyboarding
The following represents a visual journey of the customer problem, solution discovery, and solution implementation.
Initial sessions focused deeply around brainstorming around what priorities may be for our patients as well as helped prioritize key features of the future system.
Prototyping
The team decided to focus efforts on two outputs.
- A high-fidelity mockup showing the north star vision of the concept
- A technical prototype highlighting feasibility with selected AWS technologies
Call to Action
Interested in integrating the concepts of this challenge into your production workloads? Contact us and we can discuss how AWS Cloud and the AWS Partner Network can help accelerate your goals.
Artifacts
| Deliverable | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| PRFAQ | Fictional press release for the MyReferral Navigator Vision | https://github.com/UC-CIC/my-referral-navigator-doc/blob/main/prfaq.pdf |
| Storyboard | Visual journey of the concept | https://github.com/UC-CIC/my-referral-navigator-doc/blob/main/storyboard.pdf |
| Prototype (Mockup) | North star vision of MyReferral Navigator | https://github.com/UC-CIC/my-referral-navigator-doc/blob/main/mockup.pdf |
| Prototype (Technical) | Technical prototype utilizing Amazon Connect | https://github.com/UC-CIC/my-referral-navigator-tech |