Sarah Doody
I’m in the middle of a few huge projects right now. We’re in the wire-frame phase right now, which means I’m making a ton of screens and honestly my brain is totally overwhelmed. So much effort and thought goes into good design.
Welcome to 2016! This isn’t going to be a blog post about resolutions. The truth is, I don’t like resolutions. Most people make resolutions that are too big to achieve. Then they get discouraged and quit all together.
Recently I told you about PillPack (read the previous post) and why I think they are really doing a great job about designing a system that improves the experience of both pharmacists and patients.
I realized that there are a lot of lessons we can learn from PillPack so I wanted to actually show you it and go a little deeper. So, I did my very first Periscope a few days ago to show you more about PillPack.
Think back to the last time you had to take medication. Did you actually take it exactly as prescribed? Or, did you miss a few doses or perhaps just stop taking it before the last dose?
There’s a good chance that you don’t take every single dose. In fact a 2015 study by market research firm Kenton Global found that 80% of Americans miss taking their medications.
I’ve written before about why I think Oscar Healthcare is really doing a great job at creating a new customer experience around health insurance (read my post here). Recently, I put the insurance to the test.
In mid July I was getting ready to go on a 2 week work trip during which I’d be taking 7 different flights. For about the last month, I’d had a sore throat and felt totally run down. I had tried resting, making crazy juices with my juicer, cough syrup, acupuncture, yoga, and all kinds of over the counter remedies. But nothing seemed to help.
Concerned that I had a run down immune system and that I’d be at increased risk of getting sick during the work trip, I decided to play it safe and use Oscar’s “Talk to a doctor” feature less than 24 hours before my flight … I know, I know, very last minute planning on my part!Continue reading
I grew up in Canada and trying to figure out the American health insurance system is something that’s been a huge challenge for me.
I remember getting my first “real” job at a big Fortune 500 software company and being emailed a ton of forms to fill out for health insurance. I had no idea what any of it meant. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really anyone who could guide me through the process.
No one in the human resources department wanted to be advise me because of that delicate line between “advising” and “choosing”. It was so very frustrating for me as I felt totally blind. If someone had asked me what my plan deductible was or what my yearly out of pocket maximum was, I would have been clueless.
It wasn’t because I didn’t have the brains to figure it out. It was because the process was so broken and the information was so inaccessible that I just gave up out of impatience and total frustration. Each plan had it’s own brochure or PDF with tiny fonts and crazy charts and tables filled with insurance and legal jargon.Continue reading
A year ago I was experiencing a lot of shoulder pain and I knew I needed to do something about it. I didn’t have a big injury, but I just had constant dull pain in my right shoulder. The pain was presumably due to poor ergonomics at my desk, constant use of my mouse, stress, and sleeping on my right side.
I also get migraines and have vertigo but I’ve figured out how to manage those problems and they weren’t the instigator for checking out acupuncture. But the shoulder pain was really affecting me because my right hand is my mousing hand and I noticed the shoulder pain all the time!
At my first appointment, I expected to go in and have them put a bunch of needles in my shoulder and tell me to come back once or twice a week for a few weeks. Well, that’s not exactly what happened.Continue reading
It’s that time of year that I loathe – open enrollment for health insurance. Each year no matter how much research I do, or how many questions I ask, I feel like I have no idea what I’m selecting and that inevitably, something is being done wrong.
Having grown up in Canada, the notion of applying for health insurance, selecting from a myriad of plans, and trying to guess how much money I should set aside for health care expenses is just something I never had to deal with. And although I’ve been living in the USA for about 12 years, I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing.
This all got me thinking, I wonder how many people either abandon pursuing insurance, or have the wrong insurance due to the complexity and friction of the entire process. Continue reading
America is trapped in a consumption driven lifestyle, and the consequences of our actions are being revealed more now than ever before. Our economy has reached a state of turmoil not seen since the Great Depression. In March 2009, the collective credit card debt of Americans was just over $940 billion. Our nation’s obesity levels have reached ultimate highs with two thirds of adults and one third of children in America are obese. And, we are in the middle of a massive climate crisis. The United States per capital carbon dioxide emissions in 2005 were more than four times greater than China’s and almost fourteen times India’s.
Have we become blind to the consequences of our actions?
There is an eminent need to quantify our behavior and bring more transparency and understanding to the effects that our actions have.Continue reading