Universal Health Services
Unifying the digital experience for a network of over 40 hospitals
Truth
Patients want the ability to make informed healthcare decisions on their own terms.
Beauty
A seamless and empathetic digital experience that brought together a disparate network of tools—to empower patients and healthcare providers.
The situation
Universal Health Services, Inc. (UHS) is one of the country’s largest hospital management companies, with more than 400 acute care hospitals, behavioral health facilities and ambulatory centers across the U.S.
They wanted to make seeking healthcare a positive, local, and empowering experience, which was crucial to reinforcing its brand promise of being responsive and compassionate to their patients. But the network’s digital experience—across 40+ websites—lacked consistency, was not designed for accessibility, and utilized outdated tools.
What we did
- Performed primary research, including customer interviews and surveys to develop a detailed understanding of their websites’ main users—patients, career seekers, and employees—and their pain points: paying bills, finding doctors, and searching for careers
- Built a flexible but unified global design system across their Acute Care and Independence Physician Management business lines
- To optimize ongoing improvements, post-launch, we closely monitored primary (appointment bookings) and secondary (finding a doctor) anonymized patient actions; we then associated value with these actions, which created a basis for comparison between hospitals and helped guide strategy for patient-action funnels
Services
- Experience Strategy
- Experience Design
- Technology Platform Planning
- Content Strategy and Creation
- Data and Insights
- SEO
“Hero’s approach to defining user experience gave me the confidence that we could reimagine our digital front door. Hero is not just an agency; they are a strategic partner for our business.”
Impact
