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Centene · Enterprise healthcare · Product research
Consolidating the “Find a Provider” experience
Product research and longitudinal benchmarking across a complex enterprise ecosystem—connecting recurring user friction to product priorities, measurable experience gains, and business impact.
Challenge
A fragmented experience with persistent friction.
Centene was consolidating fragmented Find a Provider experiences across more than 40 state-specific health plan sites into a unified enterprise experience. The research challenge was not simply whether members could complete a search, but where the experience consistently broke down across lines of business, which issues persisted over time, and which changes would produce measurable improvement.
What was breaking down
- Members had to build an entire search, including filters, before seeing results.
- No plan-level descriptions led to less confidence while searching for a provider.
- Over-filtering frequently produced zero results, with limited ability to recover or adjust.
- Unclear terminology such as “provider” and “facility.”
- Help documentation was difficult to find when needed.
- Interaction patterns for newer features, including provider comparison, required validation.
- Accessibility and cross-market requirements added additional complexity.
Constraints
Research had to work inside a complex enterprise system.
01
Regulatory and contractual requirements limited how far some search and provider-information patterns could be changed.
02
Plan-level descriptions and provider imagery were incomplete or inconsistent.
03
Accessibility compliance introduced additional design and implementation requirements.
04
The work had to align with PI planning and Open Enrollment timelines.
05
Recommendations needed to work across multiple lines of business, including WellCare Medicare and Ambetter Marketplace.
06
Newer interaction patterns, such as provider comparison, had to be validated without disrupting core search behavior.
Research scope
Four core user workflows tested
01
Orientation / Discoverability
“Find the Find a Provider tool.”
02
Localization & Accessibility
“Change the current language from English to Spanish.”
03
Basic Search Success
“Find a primary care doctor and let us know if they are open on weekends.”
04
Advanced Search Success
“Find a female dermatologist that is accepting new patients and speaks Spanish.”
My Role & Approach
Lead the research from legacy review through validation.
01
Gathered prior data and competitor analyses to inform discovery and new design prototypes.
02
Identified competitors for testing.
03
Facilitated all interviews—15 total, 5 per line of business—and benchmark studies—12 total, 2 per website and 4 per line of business.
04
Synthesized all data and presented findings to leadership.
Evaluated prototypes
Validated the new experience
Mixed Methods Study Architecture
Qualitative depth + standardized benchmarking
15
Moderated sessions
5 deep-dive interviews per line of business exploring prior care-seeking experiences, core screen feedback, and platform preferences.
12
Unmoderated benchmarking surveys
2 surveys per site tracking Task Ease/Difficulty scales (1–5) with conditional follow-up logic to diagnose user friction.
QX
Standardized benchmarking
An 8-question post-test framework combining behavioral task success with attitudinal metrics including trust, loyalty, aesthetics, and ease of use.
Results
Members wanted to get to useful results faster.
Results suggested that users wanted to get to the results faster by having less filtering up front in language that they understood. Users found the results page overwhelming and outdated, preferring profiles to expanding results cards. Users were also confused when seeing places labelled as “providers” on results cards.
Original results page
What the evidence pointed to
- Reduce filtering before results.
- Use terminology that reflects how members naturally search.
- Move detailed provider information into dedicated profiles.
- Make recovery from zero-results states explicit.
Recommendations
UX Design Recommendations
- 01
Support Better Page Discoverability
Place the “Find a Provider” CTA in multiple layout locations to optimize tool discovery.
- 02
Simplify Initial Searching
Add an explicit, dedicated “Primary Care Doctor” option to the initial category drop-down to compress the search funnel. For example, if someone is searching for a primary care provider, use “Primary Care” rather than “Primary Care Nurse.”
- 03
Clarify Taxonomy and Filtering
Rename ambiguous “provider” labels to “places” or “doctors” on search cards so users apply filtering choices correctly.
- 04
Reallocate Details to a Profile Page
Add provider profiles to improve comprehension, mitigate overwhelm, and inform confident decision-making.
- 05
Clear Guidance and Recovery
Add clear steps to help redirect users to relevant results.
Impact
Measurable improvement across experience and delivery.
- Provided clarified error recovery instructions.
- Decreased likelihood of reaching zero result pages.
- Provided dedicated pages for providers.
- Improved tool discoverability
- 37% on Marketplace Desktop
- 30% on Marketplace Mobile
- Improved search success
- 13% Marketplace Mobile
- Overall Experience Gains: Total Marketplace QX scores improved by +2% across both mobile and desktop platforms.
- Engineering Velocity: Clear, data-validated research insights eliminated development feature-creep, allowing engineering teams to hit strict rollout deadlines seamlessly.
+37%Marketplace desktop discoverability
+30%Marketplace mobile discoverability
+13%Marketplace mobile search success
+2%Marketplace QX score
Lessons
Key Takeaways for Future Projects
Longitudinal Benchmarking Wins
A single usability study only tells you what's broken today. True UX strategy requires repeated measurement over years to provide evidence that you addressed the user problem.
Speed Up Synthesis
Documenting moderated sessions in a central, structured table in real-time eliminates synthesis lag, dropping insights into developer hands instantly.
Stakeholder Inclusion Defuses Resistance
Inviting cross-functional teams directly into research observation rooms builds rapid organizational empathy and aligns competing LOB roadmaps.
The Value of Centralized XM Insights
A great researcher doesn't let data sit in a silo. By packaging my findings into journey maps and personas and delivering them to our centralized Experience Management Insights team, I helped build foundational enterprise artifacts. This project taught me that true alignment happens when every internal department operates from the exact same baseline knowledge of our members.