Fernway HealthHealthcare2025

Patient intake that takes minutes, not mornings

Redesigning check-in for a network of 60 outpatient clinics, so patients arrive prepared and front-desk teams get their mornings back.

Role: Lead UX designer
Timeline: 16 weeks
Team: PM, 5 engineers, clinical advisor
Platform: Web, iPad kiosk

A nurse walks an older patient through intake questions on a tablet in a bright clinic room

Outcomes

-61%
Time to complete intake
+34 pts
System Usability Scale score
92%
Forms finished before arrival

The challenge

Patients spent an average of 18 minutes on paper forms in the waiting room, front-desk staff re-typed every answer by hand, and one in five appointments started late. Fernway had tried a digital form before, but most patients abandoned it halfway through.

Starting in the waiting room

I spent the first three weeks in four clinics, shadowing reception teams and sitting beside patients as they filled in their forms. We ran 22 contextual interviews and timed 140 check-ins from start to finish.

Three patterns stood out:

Patients rarely knew their medication names, so they guessed or skipped the question.
The old digital form asked 64 questions on a single page, with no way to save progress.
Reception re-entered every answer into the records system, which created errors and queues.

Two people dot voting on ideas in an open notebook during a co-design session — Dot voting during a co-design session with nurses and receptionists.

Designing a calmer flow

We rebuilt intake as a short, conversational flow that adapts to each visit type. Questions that did not apply simply disappeared, cutting the average form from 64 questions to 19.

Patients now get a link 48 hours before their appointment, can pause and come back at any point, and can photograph their medication labels instead of typing names they cannot spell. Every answer flows straight into the clinic's records, so nobody re-types anything.

“It felt like the clinic already knew me. I was done before my coffee was.”

Testing with real patients

We tested four rounds of prototypes with 38 patients aged 19 to 87, including people using screen readers and adults filling in forms on behalf of a parent. Every round fed directly into the next sprint.

Outcome

After a staged rollout to all 60 clinics, average intake time fell from 18 minutes to 7, and 92% of patients now finish their forms before they arrive. Late starts dropped by almost half.

What I learned

The biggest wins came from removing work, not adding features. A week in the waiting room taught me more than a month of dashboards.