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Reimagining the Patient Booking and Check-in Flow at a Medical Lab copy

Canada’s largest community lab, LifeLabs, was looking to explore how they might optimize a new remote check-in flow, and improve wait times and patient experience by better preparing both patients and staff for their visit.

Challenge

Upon arrival at the lab, many patients were unaware of what tests were being conducted, and/or unready for tests requiring preparation. Some locations were also experiencing very long and inconvenient wait times. Paper requisitions were often incomplete or illegible. By digitizing the check-in flow, LifeLabs felt that many of these issues could be addressed.

PIVOT’s focus was to provide a user-centred design research approach to uncover insights, gaps, and barriers in the current service flow and look at future possibilities for the evolution of service delivery. By optimizing the efficiency of their check-in experience, offering more personalized care, and engaging the local community more effectively, the overall experience at LifeLabs could be enhanced for patients.

Solution

Focusing on the total patient experience from pre-arrival to departure from the lab, the PIVOT team documented the process using field research, user interviews and mapping techniques to track the current and potential future service states.

With this roadmap in place, LifeLabs could determine immediate next steps and priorities. PIVOT worked closely with them to define user booking and check-in flows for the company’s new innovation and client experience centre in Barrie, Ontario — The LifeCentre by LifeLabs™. The new user flow document in turn informed the information architecture, interaction design, and user interface for the final booking website, check-in tool, and lobby monitor.

PIVOT recognized that user-centred design applies to both our patients and staff. The needs of both user groups were equally important in their design of the solution. The team’s commitment to user needs created an effective and functional tool that was easily adopted by our patients and our staff within a rapid pilot launch timeframe. Rapid implementation was important to us so we could get feedback from our patients and staff, while continuing to learn and discover the gaps and barriers in our current service flow. The tool has a built-in survey trigger post-service, and we’ve used this feedback function to better understand patient needs.”

Project Lead, LifeCentre by LifeLabs™