Question: |
Can a doctor’s office for professionals adapt to families with kids? |
Format: |
A medical clinic that’s only open for one night. |
Tools: |
Doctor’s office, medical staff, bananas, crayons. |
One Medical was off to a great start on a bold mission: to offer better health care to everyone. They’d established a network of primary care clinics with locations across the United States—in San Francisco; New York; Boston; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; Phoenix; and Los Angeles. Same-day appointments, treatment via mobile app, more time with patients, and beautiful office interiors had earned them thousands of dedicated patients.
Most of those customers were young, tech-savvy professionals—the kind of folks to whom “treatment via mobile app” sounds like a good idea. That customer base was growing fast, but One Medical wanted to open their service up to more kinds of patients. With plenty of customers starting to have children, the company figured the sensible next step was family care—for the babies, children, and teenagers of its existing patients.
One Medical hoped to serve both families and grown-ups in the same locations. They already had many physicians on staff who were trained in family medicine. But before the first of these new clinics opened, they wanted to be sure patients would have a great experience.
How do you prototype an entire doctor’s office? Like Savioke and Slack, One Medical built on top of what they had. Chris Waugh, One Medical’s vice president of design, hatched a plan: For one evening, One Medical would simulate a real family clinic in one of their existing offices.
At 6 p.m., the Hayes Valley office in San Francisco closed its doors. Chris and his team went to work. They had several ideas for setting up the office so that it would keep its sophisticated aesthetic—popular with the grown-ups—while adding appeal for children.
They brought in crayons and paper. They set out bananas, apples, fruit bars, and coconut water. They also had a treasure chest filled with toys, but, not wanting to make the lobby feel too childish, they tucked it behind the desk. Two family care physicians were on-site, and two more One Medical employees took charge of the lobby. Everyone had a script to follow. It was time for the prototype.
Then the children started to arrive. Chris had recruited five families to come in for visits. Right away, the test ran into a bump—literally. The doorway at the Hayes Valley clinic had a small ledge that was navigable by wheelchairs but tricky for strollers. “Kids were nearly bouncing out of their seats,” Chris said.
The next surprise was how much was in those strollers. “Families come prepared. They’ve got toys, they’ve got extra clothes, they’ve got snacks. They bring siblings, grandparents, nannies.” The lobby, optimized for individual adults, became crowded. The One Medical team realized they’d need a slightly different lobby design for the family clinic.
The One Medical team had also underestimated the importance of the front desk staff. Kids were nervous as they came in. The clinic was a new place, and young children associate the doctor’s office with painful vaccination shots. “We lucked out with our prototype staff. Taleen and Rachel [two of One Medical’s office managers] switched into this super-welcoming mode, greeting kids, putting them at ease. It wasn’t in the script, but it saved the day.”
The exam rooms provided their own challenges. One Medical has their doctors sit behind a desk, encouraging a more natural conversation with the patient than the usual exam bed and rolling chair. But with kids in the room, the desk became an obstacle. “Everything the kids could touch, they touched. Every drawer was opened.”
Still, the kids were having fun, so the desks didn’t seem like a huge problem. Then Chris and his team interviewed the families. It turned out it was the parents—more than the kids—who were bothered by the exam room setup. The parents themselves needed reassurance from the doctor, but the exam room chaos made communication difficult. It was a subtle point, but crucial for putting parents at ease. Luckily, it was easy to fix.
When One Medical opened their first family clinic a few months later, they could see both adults and kids in the same location, and they could staff the office with family medicine doctors from the One Medical team. But there was more room in the lobby, no awkward desks in the exam rooms—and no ledge in the doorway.