Case study: Clearing a path for Medicaid Recipients

Step 1: Research

I discovered finding basic Medicaid information (what, how, where) was no easy task

Armed with all the search queries I could conjure, I found that locating information that made sense to me was tough. I was greeted by a mish-mash of disorganized government sites, companies trying to lead-gen with requests for form completion, and the occasional Medicaid insurance company that didn’t do much to clarify matters.

I’m already knowledgeable on the subject and was completely confused, so consider the person trying to find information with no prior understanding!

Next, a deeper dive into the competition.

In 2015, it seemed none of our competitors were, even attempting to address the confusion (now, in 2019, the landscape seems to have improved). For most sites, the journey from search to final destination was not pretty, involved a lot of excavation to get to Medicaid-specific information, and once there, there was really no “there” there. Most of what I found did not help to clarify plan information for the insurance companies, or for Medicaid itself.

We needed to do better.

Step 2: Wireframing

I created a wireframe of the market landing page that presented the information as a series of choices with simple descriptions of the demographic. Users would need to read the description, figure out which one applied to them, then proceed to the correct info.

We needed to find a way for users to self-identify, because:

• Medicaid members often don’t know which plan they have.
  For existing members of the company’s plans, users are often unaware of which plan they have, resulting in, you guessed it, a phone call to the call center. The demographic description quickly helps them identify which plan they belong to, have so they can access they’re information quickly.
• Medicaid recipients cannot “shop” for plans, but they may not understand that. 
  Because Medicaid recipients only qualify for 1 plan and can’t “shop” for plans as commercial insurance recipients can, this approach helps them quickly get to the plan that pertains to them, and understand what we offer. And, with any luck, results in them choosing us as their insurance company.

Initial feedback from stakeholders

One of the marketing officers was uncomfortable with displaying the demographic information outright. We had never done it before, and they were concerned with offending members, as the descriptions could potentially include phrases like “low income” and “people with mental health issues”.

I created a second wire that housed the demographic description behind an accordion.

Descriptions out in the open

The final design eliminated the barriers to plan descriptions to help users get where they needed to go quickly.

Additional guidance

To help users understand they couldn’t “choose” a plan, we added the two headlines above the plan boxes “Looking for health insurance?” vs. “Already a member?” with a short explanation of what each option means, along with a bold instruction of what to do next.

The new design was a vast improvement to the level of time and effort it took users to get to the information they needed. When compared to other Managed Care Companies providing Medicaid services, the hope was that this level of help would pay off with an increase in new members, as well as retention of current members.