When you need medical care, where do you start? Do you use a symptom checker, talk to friends and family, search for a doctor online, or head to urgent care? Should you contact your insurance company’s telehealth service or even consult an AI chatbot?
For millions of patients, navigating this fragmented system feels overwhelming, delaying care and deepening access issues. Deciding "where to begin" can feel like untangling a web of complex pathways.
Beyond causing stress, making the wrong healthcare choice can delay care, lead to misaligned treatment, and limit access for other patients. And as healthcare marketers and digital experience professionals, we have to ask ourselves this critical question: Are we complicating the process for patients to choose the right care, expecting them to almost self-diagnose and choose a path forward—before they even fully understand their own health issues?
The Problem With Too Many Choices
The modern healthcare landscape is rich with options, but abundance is not always an advantage. On one hand, we’ve seen innovations such as telehealth expand access. But on the other hand, too many choices can overwhelm patients, leading to "analysis paralysis" or “decision fatigue.” Humans are confronted daily with many choices, so when the stakes are high and too many options exist, making a decision becomes exponentially harder. Decision fatigue occurs when the mental energy required to make choices is depleted, leading to poor or impulsive decisions.
"Too many options may actually be associated with decision paralysis, dissatisfaction, and diminished well-being." - American Association of Physician Leaders
Consider a new patient visiting a health system’s website. They’re greeted with multiple choices to "find a provider," "find a location," "check symptoms," or do a “Health Risk Assessment (HRA).” Do they book an urgent care visit, a convenient care visit, or a virtual visit? Do they book directly with a doctor or do they need a referral? The array of options is enough to leave even tech-savvy users or those with high healthcare literacy second-guessing themselves, if not abandoning the search altogether.
The disconnect often comes down to mismatched language and lack of cues that nudge people toward the right choice. Healthcare systems design pathways based on internal terminology and operational models, but patients think in terms of symptoms, urgency, and outcomes. We’ve unintentionally built care-finding journeys that require the user to understand our system and guess what care is right for them, rather than designing systems that meet the user where they are.
The High Stakes of Patient Confusion
65% of U.S. adults feel managing healthcare is “overwhelming” and “time-consuming.” 54% say their health would improve if their healthcare providers helped them figure out the healthcare system. - American Academy of Physician Associates
Poor user experience that causes decision fatigue in healthcare can have tangible consequences. This can sometimes result in patients opting for a higher level of care than necessary, further straining access amid ongoing physician shortages and rising demand. It can make people less likely to evaluate choices carefully and more likely to resort to mental shortcuts. This might result in avoiding care altogether or choosing a level of care that’s insufficient, potentially causing misdiagnoses or delays in treatment. Delayed care often leads to worse health outcomes, with patients eventually seeking higher-intensity interventions that could have been avoided with timely treatment. According to a Kyruus study, 47% of patients have skipped or delayed care in the past year due to poor digital healthcare experiences.
Beyond clinical impacts, the patient’s care-navigating experience influences their trust and loyalty. For health systems vying to remain competitive in an increasingly consumer-driven market, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Per Accenture, 89% switched their healthcare provider because of poor care navigation.
Borrowing Inspiration From Outside Healthcare
If you’re looking for solutions, don’t start by reinventing the wheel. Healthcare isn’t the first field to grapple with choice overload; consumer-facing industries have been refining the art of intuitive decision-making for years.
Take Netflix, for instance. Netflix doesn’t overwhelm you with thousands of options. Aside from the tailored recommendations based on past viewing history, they organize content into logical categories that turn complex choices into simpler ones for even new users. MERGE utilized a similar approach in the Broward Health Find a Doctor experience organizing providers into categories based on common decision-making criteria for Broward patients as uncovered in our primary research. This allows users to intuitively navigate and make decisions based on what matters most to them from their very first visit and opens the door for personalization.
The retail service industry also offers valuable lessons. Consider how Starbucks has simplified menu choices with straightforward sizing and curated options for seasonal specials. Despite a massive product catalog, they create an ordering experience that feels manageable and empowering to customers. These approaches work because they anticipate user needs rather than forcing users to sift through a lot of information.
Healthcare can take inspiration from these models to create digital experiences that are not only efficient but also intuitive and patient-first.
What You Can Do and How MERGE Can Help
We know the stakes, and we've successfully solved this challenge at multiple levels across healthcare systems. With deep understanding of patient journeys, our experience designers and technologists excel at structuring complex information to simplify healthcare choices, helping users navigate healthcare situations and make informed decisions more easily.
Streamline
Start by reducing the number of starting points in your "find care" pathways. Consolidate similar options, and use conversational user interfaces to guide patients in real time.
Gentle Nudges
Understand people’s “default” behavior and gently nudge them toward the right choice. For example, if someone is searching for care outside clinic hours, we know from research that many default to emergency rooms. This offers an excellent opportunity to highlight convenient care options for the following morning.
Speak the Patient’s Language
Gather data annually through interviews and social media listening to understand how patients talk about their health. This allows you to use language that reflects their real symptoms, questions, and goals, as they don’t respond to healthcare jargon or internal terminology.
Leverage AI and Personalization
Transform the way patients interact with your channels by using AI-supported personalization tools. Imagine a care-finding experience that dynamically adapts to patients, offering tailored suggestions based on symptoms, location, insurance coverage, and care urgency.
Message Framing and Reinforcements
Utilize message framing and positive or negative reinforcements to influence decisions now and in the future. For example, messages can be framed to subtly guide toward lower care options for lower acuity or severity symptoms with the incentive of faster appointment and visit times.
Implement Data Governance
In addition to guiding patients toward suitable care pathways, we must provide accurate information to guarantee the best possible experience. Implementing robust data governance is key to achieving this. Easily finding a matching provider, only to learn that they have moved offices or changed phone numbers is not only frustrating, but can lead to a loss of revenue and undermine the patient’s health journey. Ensuring that your Provider Data Management strategy is mature and robust will empower your patience to make the best choice in their healthcare journey.
The Opportunity for Transformation
Your patients are navigating a difficult healthcare landscape, but you have the power to make it easier. By reimagining the care-finding experience, healthcare organizations can serve not only patient needs but also rise above a crowded marketplace.
At MERGE, we’re committed to helping healthcare organizations transform confusion into clarity. Through strategic design, user insights, and seamless technology, we create care pathways that guide patients with confidence. Ready to transform your care-finding experience? Partner with MERGE to create patient-first pathways that build trust, loyalty, and better outcomes.
Contributors: Keir Bradshaw, Tracey Ortolano, and Ashley McFadden.
