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Effective Communication for Collecting Payment From Patients

A scenario based eLearning concept project for newly hired medical receptionists to practice asking for and collecting payments at the reception.

Audience: Newly hired medical receptionists.

Responsibilities: Instructional Design, eLearning Development, Visual Design, Storyboarding, Action Mapping, Prototyping.

Tools Used: Articulate Storyline, Adobe XD, MindMeister.

Experience the project

Overview

Front desk medical personnel need to be equipped to handle a wide variety of situations and interactions. This includes dealing with difficult conversations such as asking for payment from patients. After all, who wants to ask for payment from someone who is not feeling well and seeking medical attention?

I designed this scenario-based eLearning concept project for newly hired medical receptionists to practice asking for and collecting payments at the reception.

The Problem

In this concept project, Hope Medical Center (the client), is a community hospital that is having issues with point of service (POS) payment collection. Specifically, their POS patient payment collections were decreasing significantly. These payments were key to keeping the hospital in business to continue providing excellent care to their patients. How could they increase point-of-service payment collections and concurrently maintain good relations with their patients?

The Hospital Manager reached out to me for a solution to this problem.

The Solution

I figured out that since interactions of asking for payment took place with the front desk personnel, proper training of office staff was critical. To improve point of service collections, I suggested educating and training front-end staff how to effectively communicate with patients about financial responsibility and how to effectively handle upfront payments such as co-payments and collecting previous balances.

Process

Action Mapping

Guided by Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping, I had a meeting with the Hospital manager and the front office supervisor, an experienced medical receptionist who acted as the subject matter expert. The purpose of the meeting was to further discuss the problem they were facing and to identify the best solution. My objective was to find out the root cause of the problem and to brainstorm solutions.

My discussion with these key personnel revealed that receptionists were finding it difficult to have financial conversations with patients because it’s a sensitive topic. As a result, receptionists either ‘forgot’ to ask for payment or to make the patient aware of their financial responsibility. For most of the receptionists, they simply had trouble engaging patients in a financial discussion. The subject matter expert (SME) also pointed out that the receptionists were not motivated to ask for payment.

Since this was a performance problem, we brainstormed how front desk personnel could navigate difficult financial conversations with patients while maintaining good relations with them.

We set a goal to increase payment collections and then outlined the actions or behavior receptionists needed to do to accomplish that goal.

The Action Map below shows the goal and the actions/behaviors and sub-actions receptionists needed to do to achieve the goal.

I proposed a scenario-based eLearning focusing on the major points highlighted in the action map. I suggested an eLearning experience where the front office personnel could practice having financial conversations with patients in a non-risk environment before they dealt with real patients. A scenario-based eLearning would provide opportunities for staff to practice in realistic scenarios, something that can’t be done with just a PowerPoint presentation. I explained that once the receptionists became comfortable during training sessions, having these conversations with patients would be easier and subsequently, they would be able to collect payments from patients efficiently and effectively.

Text Based Storyboard

Once we agreed on the action map, I went on to do a text-based storyboard. The storyboard was derived from the action map. All the actions, choices and consequences in this scenario-based eLearning were derived from the main points in the action map. I shared the storyboard with the client via Google docs.

Visual Mock-ups

After the storyboard was approved by the client, I went on to create visual mock-ups in Adobe XD. I created layouts and visual design in XD because it is quick to use and easier to change elements in XD than Storyline. I created several iterations of the visual design of the project, focusing on color contrast to get the attention of the learner, position and shape of buttons and alignment. I also included relevant images to help tell the story.

I shared the mock-ups with the SME and the client to get their feedback. With minor corrections on the position of the buttons, both were satisfied with the visual design. The SME was impressed by the choice of photo-realistic images as they were relevant and presented a more realistic touch to the whole scenario, grabbing the attention of the learners.

Visual Storyboard

Once the SME was satisfied with the visual design, I combined the text- based storyboard with the visuals to create a visual storyboard. The visual storyboard included programming notes and files that would be needed for the project.

Interactive Prototype

Using Storyline, I created an interactive prototype to test the functionality of the project. I developed the introductory slides, question 1 slide and the consequence slides for question 1. I shared the prototype with the client and the SME and they gave me their feedback. One of the concerns was the marker which they felt was too small and the learner could easily miss it. Based on their feedback, I increased the size of the marker, and made sure it was flashing so the learner wouldn’t miss it.

Full Development

After receiving feedback from the client and the SME, I then developed the rest of the project in Storyline. This was the most exciting time for me as I saw my project come to life. Using triggers, states, variables and conditions, markers, animations, my project was seamlessly developed. I’m especially proud of the simplicity of the project yet so engaging for the learner. The learner has an opportunity to make choices, and if they make a wrong choice, they clearly see the consequences and have an opportunity to try again and gain more information when they hover over the marker. I developed the project in such a way that if the learner misses one or more of the questions, they will have an opportunity to restart the course to make sure they perform the desired actions. I achieved this with variables and conditions. Working with states in Storyline was a delight to me! Learners can easily navigate their choices because of the changing states of buttons and text boxes.

Results and Take-Aways

I shared the completed project with my peers, and it was well received. Viewers commented on the smooth flow of the scenario, easy navigation, and captivating visuals.

With more time and resources, I could improve on this project by expanding the patient situations. This experience only features one patient scenario, but there are far more situations that patients may present with. I could add different scenarios of patients with varying situations, for example, a patient who refuses to pay, doesn’t have insurance or doesn’t understand how their insurance works. Different patients can be presented either sequentially or presented at the beginning of the scene and learners get to choose which patient they would want to go with first. That way, the learner can be exposed to different scenarios that they would encounter in their everyday life. I also think I could make it a more branched scenario eLearning with more pathways and consequences to make it more engaging.

Through this project, I deepened my understanding and use of Articulate Storyline 360, Adobe XD, and visual design. It also gave me an opportunity to collaborate with peers and integrate feedback in my work. I was fascinated to learn and use Storyline 360 and creating mock-ups in Adobe XD which made my overall workflow faster. I will take all that I have learnt designing and developing this project to the next level as I continue my professional journey as an instructional designer and eLearning developer.

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