MyNM by Northwestern Medicine 17+

Better than nothing?

Especially since everything was forcibly moved to the app I had hoped things would start working. But since downloading this I have never had access to messaging or just about any of the other features of this app. My child had been sick and now I’ve come down with something and I wanted to schedule a telecom appointment for myself and send a message to my pediatrician about some of my concerns but I’ve been forced to call the hospital and sit in wait times just to be told I can’t come in due influx in RSV cases and that if I can treat at home it’s better. Especially if he has a possibility of having COVID. The previous health provider I had I did everything through the app. I liked that convenience and I had hoped to have the same here but have yet to have that. Bought all I can do on this app is see my billing balance

Beware - Communication Breakdowns and Confusion Guaranteed

The app is supposed to help with communication between a doctor’s office and patient, instead it creates an even bigger bureaucratic bottle neck than is already taking place at Northwestern Fertility Clinic. My experience has been that I have several extra steps each time I need to connect with the office: logging in each time (no ability for facial recognition), having a limited amount of sender options (I can’t email a nurse directly, only my doctor but they never respond directly), unresponsiveness (sometimes I have to wait days for an urgent question to be answered) and runaround from the office (when I call the office they tell me to send a MyChart message) and when I send a MYChart message I see that someone has read it but not responded.

The app does have some good UI elements: easy to find the message, billing and results sections. The bones are there for it be a great app with a little consideration for the patient experience. I don’t have insight into what the doctors and nurses see on their end, but it seems like there could be some better designs in place to help connect the two sides. Get a UX expert, it’ll be well worth it and save a lot of time, frustration and patient retention.

Developer Response ,

Hello- we're sorry you're having trouble with MyNM. Face ID is available - click the gear icon on the menu to visit the app's settings and turn it on. It sounds like the other issues pertain more to an issue at the clinic you visit, so this feedback has been passed along to the manager of the Fertility Clinic. If you'd like for someone to respond to you directly, please email us at MyNM@nm.org so that we can communicate with you personally.

Can’t book appointments with doctors

They have the most convoluted process of trying to book an appointment with a doctor which, aside from a few tiny edge cases, always results in being denied an appointment. When you are denied you’re told to call the office but give no phone number on that screen to call. When you do find a phone number in the app you can’t tap it to dial it nor can you copy it out to paste into the phone app. I had to take a screenshot of the phone number and type it in manually to dial.

They have a doctor finder which is great, but you can never book anything with a doctor you found. From a doctor’s page in the app, tapping “Request an Appointment” dumps you out to Their generic request web form in Safari. No query parameters are in the url, nothing about the doctor you spent all that time trying to find is passed into that webpage. This web page then prompts you for all the info you’ve already entered into the NM app, wasting everyone’s time, only to be told you’ll be contacted in 2 days.

This app is nothing more than a gatekeeper preventing people from getting the care they need.