Medicare.gov

The Client

The United States’ national health insurance program, Medicare started in 1965 under the Social Security Administration (SSA) and is now administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

The Situation

Medicare staffers wanted to educate the user base to improve their understanding of the Medicare program and empower them to take action.

The Challenge

Given the mature target audience for Medicare.gov, it was challenging to break down and display the information in a way that elderly Americans could easily navigate, use and understand. 

The Solution

To better understand Medicare’s user base, the web team performed numerous user research sessions and then presented their findings and proposed changes to other Medicare.gov, CMS.gov and healthcare.gov web teams. The team also continually monitored site feedback, allowing them to pivot and deliver changes that were beneficial to users.

They launched an improved user experience on Medicare.gov to help people learn about the program and understand the steps they needed to take to sign up and use their new coverage. This section, called “Get Started With Medicare,” has the information all in one place and breaks the main information and steps down into small chunks for easy understanding. Users can go through the steps in a linear fashion or jump around to get the specific information they need: 

• Get the Basics: A summary of the parts of Medicare, costs and how Medicare works
• Sign Up: Information about enrollment periods and how to sign up, based on an individual’s current situation, such as employment or health coverage status.
• Get More Coverage: A summary of coverage options, including a side-by-side comparison of Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage, and tools to find plans in the user’s area.
• Using Medicare: Details about a user’s Medicare card, how to get services, what is covered, doctors and providers that work with Medicare and other helpful tools and resources.

The Results

Using Acquia Cloud Platform for hosting the Drupal site afforded Medicare the advantage of seamless deployments and support. Customer satisfaction scores showed that the revamped Medicare site was more effective at serving its end users; the site achieved a 35% increase in its "accomplished goal" metric and a 30% increase in its "information provided" metric.