Improving the experience for injured workers
What was the problem?
A product geared towards helping injured workers return to to health, work, and productivity—along with guiding and encouraging them through the claims process—was looking for ways to use the data they receive from receive from ecological momentary assessments to improve the experience for those injured workers.
Background
While claim adjusters are expected to form a relationship with injured workers, they may not have the bandwidth to check-in with the injured worker as often as needed. The status quo in workers compensation (or disability) is for a claims professional to check in with an injured worker every 4 weeks. The product referenced leverages a behavioral science tool called ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to prevent recall bias by asking an individual—in our case, an injured worker—in real time how they feel about specific questions/topics.
What’s an EMA?
Ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) study people’s thoughts and behavior in their daily lives by repeatedly collecting data in an individual’s normal environment, at or close to the time they carry out that behavior. They are primarily used by psychology and behavioral health researchers and practitioners engaged in a wide variety of fields, including:
Substance abuse research and treatment
Smoking cessation
Anxiety
Depression
Eating disorders
Happiness / Well-being
Sexual behavior
Medical disorders
Time use
Interpersonal relationships
EMA is also used in these areas to assess the effect of interventions and for clinical outcomes assessment. Learn more about them from GOV.UK
Proposed mobile dashboard view for injured workers managing their disability claims and recovery.
Insight
Placing the injured worker first not only empowers the worker throughout the claims process, but it also reinforces a “people first” philosophy in parralell to “advocacy-based” claims models. Early and continued engagment gives the opportunity to deliver multiple benefits and build trust with the injured worker to ultimately support a timely recovery.
Solution
The proposed approached shifted the focus and flow off the onboarding experience for workers. This shift would bring an injured worker directly into their first EMA questionnaire and give them the opportunity to set a cadence for reminders for future ones. By engaging with workers and getting them started with EMA interactions sooner, it helps enourage longer-term enagement and provides information on their outlook faster so if they need support, adjusters can better respond. It would help the system cater support content faster to injured workers to help them process and aid recovery. Letting workers set the cadence also gives them more ownership over their claim and recovery processes.
By adjusting the dashboard view to focus more on the EMA assessments and support topics to help them cope, it shifts the injured worker experience focus from claims logistics more to the worker themself to better encourage them to engage. Access to existing claim management options are still present, but with lower priority.
Process
After watching demo of the product and finding similar services like AthenaCX that offer EMA tools, along with some research that discusses EMA as part of digital intreactions in emerging technologies for clinical practice.
In reviewing the demos, I saw the opportunity to shift the focus more towards the worker and how they might be feeling and remapped what it might look like to give them a more directed onboarding experience that brings them to complete their first EMA questionnaire and give them more control over the process.
Screenshot of demo of current platform experience.
With that change in mind, I looked into mobile applications that focus on support and diary entry in mental health applications.
Sketches and discovery screenshots after researching mental health and related apps
The existing onboarding experience was focused on tasks and signing paperwork before fully engaging with the workers themselves. The dashboard they would be welcomed to also lacked a clear call-to-action, which could be disorientating to people new to platform and make it easy for them to get lost. The proposed changes ask workers how they are feeling after they are follow their invitation to platform as part of making their account. It also gives them the opportunity to set the cadence for how often the platform checks in on them between meetings with their claims adjustor and support team.
Diagram showing the existing onboarding flow for injured workers
Diagram showing the proposed onboarding flow for injured workers
Based on responses, resources to help deal with thoughts or issues that might hinder recovery, like fear, anxiety, or loss of motivation; can be more readily served. Workers could also receive scripted messages and talk with the platform about some of the topics. Depending on responses adjusters could be alerted if there seems to be higher risk and more priority or attention needs to be given sooner than a scheduled check-in.
Proposed mobile dashboard view for injured workers managing their disability claims and recovery; with annotations
The proposed mobile experience draws from other mental health and journaling applications by asking how workers are feeling and giving an easy way to report on their mental state. Topics are displayed based on their responses, with support topics and resources based on their current needs. Claims information and resources are also available from the dasbohbard for when they need to interaction with their claims adjustor or insurance company. The navigation items are modified to bring more focus, with the options updated to:
Their dashboard
Reminders (changed from “To-Do’s”
Appointments
Messages (chat)
Settings (with the support being grouped into it)
Examples of other app supporting screens, including the EMA questionnaire, chat, and the ability to scroll through other support topics
