Mission Possible, part 2: Future Vision

Direct to consumer pivot

*Mission Possible was a direct-to-consumer pilot Quartet ran in 2020. For more background on what it entailed and how it went, see Mission Possible, part 1.

Due to the success of the Mission Possible pilot to activate patients in a scalable way with a significantly lower cost per acquisition (as compared to provider-led channels), Quartet is aiming to have 50% of all activations via self-referral by the end of 2021. To support the company in this overall pivot to a direct-to-member corporate strategy, I worked with the VP of Product Strategy to articulate a 2-3 year vision for the patient experience that builds on the Mission Possible pilot. The experience is meant to be as close to fully digital as possible, reserving the patient services team only for the highest need patients. In mid-2021, roughly 75% of all patients that attended an appointment had some manual interaction with the services team. The EOY goal was to provide a fully digital experience to 70% of all patients who go to care.

The vision is built on three key components that will drive the future patient experience in support of the evolution of Quartet’s acquisition strategy. The components are drawn from a blend of user research-informed insights as well as hypotheses and assumptions which will need validation as teams progress towards achieving this vision.

Pillar 1

In 2019, the design team conducted a series of interviews to create a baseline understanding of the needs, motivations, and mindsets of individuals with mental health needs. A high-level journey map was constructed as part of the research output, which emphasized the concept of a tipping point, the time period when the patient is ready to take action related to their need. The clinical team affirmed this journey, which parallels Prochaska & DiClemente’s Transtheoretical model of change (aka Stages of Change), based on the assumption that behavioral change does not take place in one step or at one time, but is rather a process involving progress through a series of distinct, predictable stages.

The problem that the digital welcome experience aims to address is that few patients will find Quartet exactly when they are at their tipping point, so we need to create a set of experiences for patients to help guide them to that point, and/or a resource that they can return to when the time is right for them. In conjunction with marketing email campaigns, the digital welcome experience will provide content and interactive tools to help patients make sense of their experience and warm them up to requesting care.

Pillar 2

Prior to 2021, Quartet’s offering required manual intervention to assist the matching process in almost 100% of cases. The data science and product teams created the capability to “autolaunch” patients in early 2021, but limitations of the current data collection process keep the percentage of patients able to be autolaunched (i.e. matched to a mental health provider with no manual intervention) to around 40%. As the company pivots to emphasize self-referral as the primary patient activation channel, the opportunity to reimagine that data collection to create better matches that don’t require intervention presented itself. Additionally, adding the ability to digitally schedule one’s first appointment allows the patient to keep their momentum towards care while also addressing a pain point in the current flow: practices express difficulties and frustrations in their ability to connect with new referrals over the phone.

Pillar 3

The final component of the patient experience vision is the app, designed to ensure patients remain satisfied with their provider match (and help them find a new one if they are not), create a therapeutic alliance with their provider, and help patients achieve their goals through tools that support measurement-based care

Storyboard

After establishing the core pillars of the experience, I facilitated a workshop with a cross-functional group of product managers, designers, researchers, and engineers to articulate a narrative to bring the core pillars to life. I created a storyboard to illustrate what the experience could look like.