National Government Services, Inc. (NGS) is a subsidiary of WellPoint, Inc., the nation’s leading health benefits company. Founded in 1966, NGS supports more than 200,000 providers improving the lives of over 22 million people with Medicare in 18 states and 5 U.S. territories.
NGS works closely with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to process 20 percent of the nation’s Medicare claims- more than any other contractor in the country. To keep their clients ahead of annual benefit changes and reduce provider burden, NGS has focused on continually modernizing government digital health systems.
Business Challenges
When the Affordable Healthcare Act (AHA) passed in 2010, NGS recognized the largest overhaul and expansion of coverage since their founding would require their greatest digital evolution to date. The NGS site overhaul would require a complete redesign of the existing site and supporting infrastructure while allowing for future development. Additionally, NGS wanted the capability to replace their existing system, Connex, with IBM WebSphere Portal and provide a unified digital experience featuring Single Sign-On (SSO).
Our Approach
Asponte identified processes that could be expedited by the addition of custom-built tools and developed a game plan using a streamlined Task, Goal, Objective navigation model. The redesign was planned in two phases to avoid any disruption to the client’s business day.
Phase 1 focused on the transition to an exceptional content experience “behind the scenes” like improving the content architecture and an improved search function to increase the relevance of search results.
Phase 2 extended the site’s functionality and laid the framework for a unified digital experience users could see like SSO, unified account management, and Connex integration patterns.
Site Upgrade
- Content simplified across the site with a focus on navigation and page layouts
- Existing tools consolidated, streamlined and optimized for a more approachable UI
- Survey form (ForeSee) added to verify ease of use and the finished product aligns with user expectations.
Design update
- Visualizations for each process makes content easily understandable
- Page layouts with “at-a-glance” usability make high volume content easy to sort and filter
- Micro-interactions, like user-specific benefit calculators, create a tailor-made feel
- Mega Tabs optimized to access critical tasks like Policy, Billing Support, and Training from any page
Software Leveraged
- IBM WebSphere Portal
- IBM Web Content Manager
Results
Asponte cut development costs for NGS via continuous collaboration and creation of independent workflows. Their users now enjoy a 50% overall reduction to navigational burden in a secure and clean environment. The updated menu system allows users to find content faster and creators can now quickly tag new content as it’s made. Syndication accepts all the new content while leaving all the old content behind with the old applications. ForeSee survey scores increased dramatically soon after the close of the project, proving end user satisfaction.
