Calm & Empowered
Designing a healthcare experience around how patients should feel.
Geisinger Health System | UX Designer (Contractor) | 2016-2017
The Problem
Healthcare billing is built around insurance systems, not patients. An Explanation of Benefits — the document sent after a claim is processed — is technically complete. It lists every service, every cost, every payment. What it doesn't do is explain any of it in language a patient understands. Deductible, coinsurance, copay, out-of-network — these terms show up with no context, written for a reader who already knows what they mean.
At Geisinger, a major regional health system in Pennsylvania, patients ran into two specific problems. They couldn't tell what they owed or why. And when insurance didn't cover something — a denied claim, an ambulance ride outside the plan — there was no real explanation, just confusion and a call to customer service that better design could have prevented.
The information was all there. The problem was communication.
My Role
I was a UX design contractor, brought in through Red Privet, the agency leading the engagement. I worked alongside another UX generalist and a UX research specialist who ran the project, contributing across discovery and design. In discovery, I co-facilitated stakeholder interviews and co-led design sprint workshops, sketching live for the room as sessions progressed. In design, I owned the EOB claim overview, service explanation, coinsurance explanation, and benefits landing screens, across both desktop and mobile.
What I Did and Why
Set a clear north star and got stakeholders aligned around it early
The design intent was stated explicitly from day one: build a responsive experience that leaves patients feeling calm and empowered. In healthcare, that's not a soft goal — it's a standard I measured every label, visual, and line of copy against. Before any design work started, I co-led workshops with Geisinger's product, clinical, and business stakeholders to get everyone aligned on the same patient problem, sketching decisions live during the sessions so the room had an immediate shared reference. That early alignment is what let the design phase move with clear direction — and it's part of why Geisinger extended the contract.
Redesigned the EOB as a patient-first document
The core challenge was translation: turning a legally complete but humanly incomprehensible document into something a patient could actually read. I reorganized the claim overview around three questions every patient actually asks — what did everything cost, what do I owe, what did insurance pay — and gave each one its own section, with the dollar amount up top and a plain-language sentence underneath explaining what it means. Terms like deductible and coinsurance got bolded and explained right where they appeared, not buried in a glossary. A services table at the bottom listed each charge — Ambulance, ER Visit, X-Rays, Rx — with date, cost, what Geisinger paid, and what the patient owed, with a "View Details" option for anyone who needed more.
Wrote explanations that meet patients where they are
For a patient looking at an ambulance charge their insurance didn't cover, the screen said plainly: "[Insurance provider] did not pay towards this service because ambulance rides (provided by the fire department) are not covered by your plan." No policy number, no clause reference — one sentence that answers the actual question. The coinsurance screen worked in two layers: what happened on this specific claim, visualized with a simple pie chart, and a collapsible section underneath for anyone who wanted to understand how coinsurance works in general. Patients who just needed the number could stop there. Patients who wanted the concept could go deeper.
Built responsive from the start, not adapted later
The portal was designed for desktop and mobile in parallel, not as a desktop experience squeezed onto a small screen afterward. Mobile got the same information hierarchy and the same plain-language explanations, with content gated progressively so patients weren't hit with everything at once — same substance, paced differently for the device.
The Scope
A responsive patient portal redesign: the benefits landing page, EOB claim overview on desktop and mobile, service detail explanations, and coinsurance and benefits education screens. Plain-language copy throughout, progressive disclosure on mobile, pie charts for cost-sharing. Stakeholder interviews and design sprint workshops, co-facilitated, with live sketch notes.
Where It Stands
This was contracted work, completed in 2016–2017. It contributed to Geisinger extending the contract, and it was an early chapter of the same practice I've kept building on since: research-grounded, user-centered design. Making complex institutional information legible and human is a problem I've returned to in different forms ever since.
