Case study · PlushCare / Accolade
PlushCare's telehealth visits required a live video appointment for every consultation — even for straightforward, low-acuity cases. That requirement created friction for members who wanted care quickly and doctors whose schedules were fully booked with visits that didn't need to be synchronous.
We introduced a message-based visit option alongside the existing video visit, letting members complete an asynchronous intake and receive a treatment plan without waiting for a live appointment. My role covered the end-to-end flow: condition-specific triage questions, eligibility logic, pricing presentation, and the success and confirmation screens.
Before designing the flow, I audited how competitors handled condition-specific intake and pricing. Amazon Clinic led with a pay-per-visit model and a condition picker; Sesame required a video call before any prescription could be issued. Both informed where we wanted to sit: async-first where clinically appropriate, with pricing shown upfront.
Working in FigJam with the PM and a physician partner, I mapped every disqualifying condition and medication interaction that would route a member from async care to a required video visit — high blood pressure, current medications, and a set of clinical exclusions defined with staff physicians. Getting this branching logic right up front kept the later screens simple.
I built four separate prototypes in UserTesting.com and ran unmoderated sessions on each, varying two variables independently: when pricing appeared in the flow, and whether both visit types (or video only) were presented as eligible outcomes.
Showing pricing upfront tested better across the board — members wanted to know the cost before answering a dozen triage questions, regardless of which visit type they ended up eligible for.
The shipped flow surfaces pricing on the very first screen, walks members through condition-specific questions, and — when a member's answers indicate they're not a safe fit for async care — redirects them into a video visit with a clear, reassuring explanation rather than a dead end.
