Improving the Online Patient Experience: Usability Tests and Task Completion

by Lannie Byrd

Throughout the past decade, hospitals have put a lot of effort into improving the overall patient experience. Private rooms. Flat-screen TVs. Wireless Internet. Chef-prepared meals. High thread-count sheets. An overall emphasis on customer service.

However, a healthcare institution’s digital platform touches patients throughout their healthcare experi­ence, from searching for a physician to paying their bill online. To make the process seamless, healthcare strategists must ensure their digital platform performs well at every point. Rather than limiting usability testing to new and redesigned sites, they should strive to regularly con­duct tests to help guarantee the best possible patient experience.

Communications, marketing, and IT professionals often have basic misconceptions about usability. Many think usability is all about de­sign and aesthetics. In reality, those elements are only a small part of the equation. Usability is predominately focused on user tasks and task com­pletion.

Healthcare websites have shifted from being communications tools to engaging patients to participate in their online healthcare management. Today’s best-of-class healthcare websites focus on the tasks a patient can complete online. Simply put, if patients can’t complete the task they had in mind when they visited the website, they are dissatisfied. But if patients can quickly complete an online task without errors, their sat­isfaction increases – as does their likelihood of a return visit, referrals, and higher patient satisfaction survey scores.

Testing methods

There are three basic types of usability testing: the next-door neighbor test, the online test, and the in-person test. The easiest usability testing method is the next-door neighbor test. A designer or devel­oper will ask the person in the next office to try out a new online task. Although the method is informal, it can give the developer a fresh per­spective from a new set of eyes.

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