MedCore Health · HealthTech · User Research
Reducing patient drop-off by 62%.
A digital health platform was losing patients at the appointment booking step. We found out why and fixed it.
A digital health platform was losing patients at the appointment booking step. We found out why and fixed it.
"I got to the insurance page and just closed it. I hadn't even booked anything yet — why do they need that already?"
Trust gap: premature commitment ask"It looked like a billing system, not a doctor. Everything was grey and official. I wasn't sure if I was booking an appointment or filing a claim."
Tone mismatch: clinical vs. caring"I wanted to know if this was actually the right service for me before I gave them anything. There was nowhere that explained that."
Value gap: no context before commitment
Left: Synthesis session mapping 18 interviews to key anxiety moments. Right: Wireframe of the restructured booking flow.
MedCore Health had built a capable digital health platform, but patients were abandoning the appointment booking flow at an alarming rate. The team had tried simplifying the form, changing button colours, and A/B testing copy. Nothing moved the needle. They came to us when they'd run out of assumptions to test.
The problem wasn't the form. It was trust. Patients, particularly those managing chronic conditions, were stopping when asked for insurance details before they understood what they were signing up for. The platform looked clinical and transactional. It felt like a billing system, not a healthcare provider.
We uncovered this through 18 in-depth interviews conducted over two weeks, supplemented by session recordings and a heuristics audit of the existing flow. Three distinct anxiety points emerged, all tied to information architecture and tone of voice, not UI complexity.
"The problem was never the form. Patients stopped because the platform asked for their trust before it had earned it."
We restructured the onboarding flow to lead with value before asking for anything in return. Insurance details moved to step three. We rewrote the microcopy throughout to match how patients actually think about their health: conversational and reassuring rather than administrative. The visual language shifted to reflect care, not bureaucracy.
The redesign was handed to the MedCore development team with annotated component specs, a tone-of-voice guide, and a research repository they could continue to draw on. Sixty-two percent fewer patients dropped off within the first month of launch.
The redesigned booking flow: value-led, trust-first, insurance details deferred to step three.