August 1, 2012 •Brian Watson
Patient friendly statement design has gotten a lot of attention and publicity in the decade-plus since the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) and American Hospital Association (AHA) issue their first joint report on patient statement design and processing best practices.
In its wake, countless studies, articles, findings, and tips have been published, parsed, argued, defended, and re-hashed.
And all that exposition and evidence has provided big dividends. Today’s best-practice patient statements are the result of an iterative process that’s delivered clear, correct, concise, user-friendly financial correspondence that speeds revenue collection and makes the billing and payment process simpler for patients than ever before.
Moving the Patient Friendly Focus to Online Billing and Payment
Unfortunately the focus on patient friendly design has yet to accompany the move to eStatements and online patient payment.
And that’s a communications breakdown. Because, as any seasoned website designer or online application developer will attest, website usability is absolutely essential for encouraging patients to use your EBPP application and (most importantly) providing the kind of user-friendly experience that will keep them coming back again and again.
The benefit of a well-designed, user-friendly eStatement application is twofold: not only does it enhance the user’s experience (and satisfaction) with your online patient payment process, but studies have shown that ease of use and quality of design increase people’s perception of a website’s credibility. And credibility is critical when it involves patients electing to share and transmit sensitive encounter and credit, debit, and bank account information online.
To help get you started on the path to a user-friendly user-interface, keep the following general EBPP design tips in mind:
1). Go Above the Fold. Don’t bury the lead. Key information should always be presented on your EBPP website in a way that limits the amount of scrolling necessary. Why? Because users just don’t like to do it. Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen reports that 77% of visitors won’t scroll on their first visit to a website.
That means, at a minimum, site menu and navigation elements should always be visible on all pages without scrolling. For your homepage, it’s also a good idea to present billing/balance due information and pre-authorized/pending payments above the fold to highlight info that’s of the greatest importance to most patients. And for account/transaction management and forms pages, keep introductory text to a minimum: besides pushing key information to a lower, less-prominent position on the page, large, dense chunks of text typically act as a barrier against page usability.
2). Use Simple Form Messaging. Forms are still the principal way for users to transmit information via the web (and are, therefore, an EBPP standby). And that can sometimes be a problem. Poorly designed forms can be actively unusable, preventing patients from completing a desired action. That’s why, as simple as it might seem, form design is a big part of ensuring your application is truly patient friendly.
Focus on making your forms as intuitive as possible. Start by picking a form title that clearly states the desired goal. Then remove unnecessary intro text. It’s not often read and tends to just gets in the way. Instructions are critical, however. So go with a conversational tone and 8th grade writing level, but be sure to remove all text and questions that aren’t absolutely critical to the task at hand. Users tend to skim forms (even important ones), so make it easy for them to do so.
3). And Easy-to-Use Form Design. Once you’ve got your messaging down, it’s time to focus on form design. Forms should be simple and clutter-free: group related information together by using bold or colorful headings and intentional white space, keep form labels short and to-the-point, and arrange all from info in an orderly, conversational way (i.e. name before insurance carrier) to prevent patient bounces and backtracking.
4). Impactful Buttons. When it comes to user experience, details matter. Imagine spending minutes completing a multi-step registration process only to hit the “Reset Form” button instead of “Submit Application”. Frustrating likely wouldn’t do that scenario justice. Buttons should stand out to help make information submission fall-off-a-log easy. Ensure they stand out from other buttons on the page through descriptive words and phrases, bold colors, and increased size and weight.
5). Pay Attention to Text and Links. Usability isn’t always about beauty. Thirteen or fourteen point text size in a tried-and-true font like Arial might not look all that cutting-edge or appealing, but it’ll help keep users with vision issues from abandoning your EBPP pay channel for a traditional option. This is why we recommend a minimum of 12 point type and a simple sans-serif font type. Similarly, links that are Yahoo-circa-1993-blue or big, bold, and in-your-face won’t likely be thrilling visually to your EBPP users, but will have the benefit of being familiar, readable, and emphatic enough to get the job done from a usability standpoint.
With EBPP best-practice design tips in tow, you’re well on your way to usability nirvana. But you might need a hand. That’s where we can help. If you have EBPP usability questions, comments, suggestions, or just want to chat about the online patient payment issues du jour, get in touch with us today.
What eStatement usability issues has your organization run into?