Heal · Healthcare · Patient Experience
From one-time visits to ongoing primary care
Heal launched as an on-demand healthcare experience. Patients booked a doctor, got care at home, and moved on. The model worked — but it optimized for the wrong thing.
The original booking flow was built around availability: find an open doctor, pick a time, confirm payment, done. Fast and frictionless, but it inadvertently taught patients to treat Heal like a one-time transaction. They weren’t choosing doctors. They were accepting whoever was next.
The result showed up in two places. Repeat visit rates were low — only about 25% of patients returned to book with the same physician. And the support queue was full of patients trying to manually recreate a relationship the product hadn’t given them a way to build: find a previous doctor, request a follow-up, ask whether they had an ongoing provider at all. Roughly 30% of repeat-visit intent required support intervention.
As Heal shifted its mission toward primary care, this became the central product problem. Primary care isn’t a transaction — it’s a relationship. A patient who sees a different doctor every visit isn’t building continuity of care. They’re just getting urgent care at home.
↑ 15%
Repeat visits with same physician
↑ 25%
Preferred provider selection
↓ 20–30%
Booking-related support contacts
The challenge
The original flow was designed to minimize time-to-appointment. That made sense for urgent care. It worked against primary care.
Patients couldn’t select a doctor based on preferences. They couldn’t see who they’d seen before. They had no mechanism to say “I want to see her again” — so when they tried, they called support. The booking experience had no concept of a relationship, so patients couldn’t form one.
The redesign needed to do two things simultaneously: give new patients a way to find a doctor they’d actually want to see again, and give returning patients a fast path back to someone they already trusted.
Task
I was responsible for redesigning the patient booking flow so it supported both first-time provider selection and repeat rebooking — without adding friction for patients who just needed care quickly.
The approach
I reframed the booking flow from “find availability” to “find your doctor.”
Rather than presenting a list of whoever was free, the new experience asked patients a small set of questions — specialty, doctor gender preference, care needs — and used those inputs to surface personalized recommendations. Doctors appeared as matched providers with a compatibility percentage, availability options, and real patient reviews. The mental model shifted from “who can see me now” to “who do I want managing my health.”
Progressive disclosure
The flow was restructured around progressive disclosure:
Understand care needs
Primary care, managing an ongoing condition, or immediate care — so the experience could route appropriately rather than treating every visit the same.
Set preferences
Specialty, doctor gender, language — the inputs that actually drive trust and long-term fit.
Review matched providers
Personalized recommendations, not a waitlist.
Add insurance or pay out-of-pocket
Moved later in the flow so it felt like completing a booking, not filing paperwork.
For returning patients, the redesign introduced a direct rebooking path. After a completed visit, patients were prompted to save their doctor — making it one tap to rebook the same physician rather than a support call.
Design
Walk through the before and after booking flows — tap each screen or use the arrows to step through like a prototype.
Before
Speed-first auto-match. Patients picked a time and got whoever was available.
After
Relationship-first matching. Patients chose a PCP and rebooked with someone they trusted.
Results
The new experience created what the original couldn’t: a patient who felt like they had a doctor, not just an appointment.
↑ 15%
Repeat visits with same physician
↑ 25%
Preferred provider selection
↓ 20–30%
Booking-related support contacts
- ↑ 15% increase in repeat visits with the same physician
- ↑ 25% of patients selecting a preferred provider — previously not captured in-flow at all
- ↓ 20–30% reduction in booking-related support contacts
- Preferred provider selection went from outside the product entirely to a core part of the booking journey
The support queue drop was the most direct signal. Patients who previously called to find a previous doctor or request a follow-up were now doing it themselves — because the product finally gave them a way to.
The bigger shift was cultural. Heal’s mission was always primary care. The booking experience just hadn’t caught up. This redesign closed that gap.