Confirming Patient Information on Check-in

When checking in on the kiosk, patients are asked to confirm their current contact information. The kiosk shows ‘***’ masking parts of the patient’s contact information. Showing patients this partially masked information will communicate enough information that if there’s been a change, they’ll realize in nearly all situations.

Additionally, partially masking the information helps communicate to the user that we take into account privacy considerations.  Our prediction is that this is one of the reasons people are fine with the other elements of CHIME (e.g. waiting room screen), because we take pains to implicitly communicate that we take into account privacy (partial masking of contact information, the use of a last initial, etc.)  These subtle cues help put people at ease.

This does also have a privacy benefit, there’s a theoretical chance that a patient checks in for someone else; there’s also the fact people can look over people’s shoulders etc. Part of the “privacy by design” philosophy is to disclose as little information as possible, to achieve the goals.