1a.
Cross-Agency Findings & Recommendations
Developing a Behavioral Health Service Design Strategy for Medicare
Client
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of Communications, Web and Emerging Technologies Group (CMS OC WETG)
Challenge
Supporting Medicare beneficiaries and others in beginning and continuing equitable and effective care journeys that engage prevention, mental health, substance use disorder and pain management benefits, at a time of pressing public need
Approach
- Foundational discovery to identify gaps between existing Medicare.gov resources and beneficiary and other stakeholder needs regarding behavioral health services
- Near, medium and long-term recommendations for a whole-person, whole-journey, whole-government service design strategy
- Building partnerships with other agencies & CMS teams to share knowledge, combine solutioning power, and implement solutions across Medicare.gov products
Partners
Digital Services @ CMS (DSAC) Medicaid behavioral health team, SAMHSA Findtreatment.gov team; Medicare.gov contractor teams
Role
Sole researcher & design team member
- Created research strategy to advance understanding of overarching and program-specific behavioral health needs & opportunities, achieve customer buy-in, and ensure teams coordination
- Led workshops to identify and categorize all relevant Medicare behavioral health benefits
- Led policy & healthcare discovery
- Recruited and interviewed SMEs and beneficiaries
- Synthesized and presented findings & recommendations
- Created wireframes & design artifacts, and pushed design iterations forward through collaboration & critique
CMS’ behavioral health strategy shaped our problem statement: How might we support Medicare beneficiaries and other end groups in beginning and continuing equitable and effective care journeys that engage prevention, mental health, substance use disorder and pain management benefits, as well as integrate these benefits into other care journeys?
Ambiguity was the name of the game for this initiative. Through this Foundational Research Plan, I defined our strategy for identifying our problem, deciding which programs would be included, and planning and scheduling research activities.
As initial discovery, I interviewed CMS policy makers, and primary care and mental health providers.
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Challenge
Non-traditional diabetes prevention & opioid treatment programs had no natural home on Medicare.gov, and an isolated Medicare “Talk-to-Someone” tool presented raw provider location & contact info data. How could we integrate provider location search into a more user-friendly comprehensive health journey?
Approach
- Data discovery to understand source & update cadence
- Near-term solutioning to integrate provider search on relevant
Role
Sole researcher & supporting design team member
Outcome
A provider search location “widget” on Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program (MDPP) & Opioid Treatment Program (OTP) coverage pages–a new feature with broad application.
This enabled beneficiaries (and other end user types) to learn about the programs, understand coverage, then search for nearby providers.
This enabled beneficiaries (and other end user types) to learn about the programs, understand coverage, then search for nearby providers.
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1c.
Medium-Term Behavioral Health Solutioning
A Medicare Behavioral Health Services “Wayfinding” Page
In implementing our Medicare behavioral health service design strategy, we remained nimble through changing priorities.
As it became clear that the shortest path to creating a behavioral health hub on Medicare.gov lay in iterating on existing coverage pages content, we supported the coverage pages content team by creating a succession of UX and content design mockups. We continued to adjust solutioning while hewing to agreed on goals: embedding the pages in more comprehensive care journeys, grouping like benefits in person-centered rather than agency-centered clusters, and devising a content strategy that would fill gaps in what people needed to know while remaining flexible through iterations and policy changes.
Challenge
Turning a long, agency-centered list of covered benefits pages with minimal information about conditions, treatments, and coverage into a person-centered hub for actionable information about Medicare’s behavioral health benefits--without duplicating existing .gov resources
Approach
• Creating successive mockups of a behavioral health wayfinding landing page that reflected the “Hello, Medicare!” UX refresh
• Wireframing revised coverage pages so that they accommodated enriched content, pass-throughs to provider and equipment search where relevant, and a robust linking strategy to supplement coverage page info with trustworthy further resources
• Auditing differing 988 crisis hotline alerts to achieve standardization, designing a more contextual, detail-rich alert, and identifying all coverage pages where it should appear
• Wireframing revised coverage pages so that they accommodated enriched content, pass-throughs to provider and equipment search where relevant, and a robust linking strategy to supplement coverage page info with trustworthy further resources
• Auditing differing 988 crisis hotline alerts to achieve standardization, designing a more contextual, detail-rich alert, and identifying all coverage pages where it should appear
Role
• Wireframing, design collab and design review to ensure that mockups embodied research learnings
• Content design for coverage page wireframes, enhanced 988 alerts, and new links
• Behavioral health coverage pages content and 988 alert audit
• Designing and leading linking strategy workshop
• Creating linking strategy governance guide to support maintenance on existing links and new link selection and implementation
• Content design for coverage page wireframes, enhanced 988 alerts, and new links
• Behavioral health coverage pages content and 988 alert audit
• Designing and leading linking strategy workshop
• Creating linking strategy governance guide to support maintenance on existing links and new link selection and implementation
Outcome
Packaged prototypes and other resources delivered to content stakeholder and static site contractor for implementation, with “wayfinding page” released in early 2024
Documentation
Behavioral Health Hub Ideation & Wireframing
Motivational Interviewing as Style Framework
Findsupport.gov
Wireframe for a behavioral health hub serving patients, providers and caregivers, modeled on teleahealth.hhs.gov
Medicare’s Mental Health & Substance Use page is the first benefits “hub” on Medicare.gov and supports continuous journeys by linking to provider sites and more resources