Background
ACC Accreditation Services offers a variety of Tools to assist in process improvement for medical facilities. The Tools used by our customers allow them to add and store patient data so the Review staff can monitor and review their processes over time. The Reviewers then provide suggestions on how their processes may be improved and if improvement is met, they will be granted an accreditation.
Problem
Internal and external customers noticed it would take an extremely long time for the Tool to load its content. The long load times occurred no matter the service line tool that was being accessed by the customer. No indication was displayed on the screen to inform the user that the tool was being loaded. This caused frustration for both internal and external customers. Both sets of customers continually access the tool(s) so the long delay can be frustrating and be an impediment for them to complete their work.
Solutions
It was determined that query memory would be used instead of querying the database dozens of times. Customers would also be told that the first time they downloaded the tool after updates that the tools would run slower as the HTML and Javascript were being cached. Load times would then be much faster after the first use.
Previously, there was no indication to the user that the tool was being loaded. With the long load times users had no idea if the tool was being loaded, or if there were any other issues. I designed a skeleton screen as an indication to the user that the tool content was being loaded. This reduced the user's frustration wondering if the tool was loading, it also displays to the user what content was yet to be loaded.
Research
I was assigned to gather data pertaining to the service line tools loading issue. I recorded my, the Accreditation Review Specialists and external customers load times to get a sense of the delay it took for the tools to load and establish a benchmark.
Load time tests were conducted daily over the next month to try and gain an understanding of what may be the cause for the long load times. It was a complicated problem because we work with hospitals and they have their own firewalls and IT policies. Meetings were scheduled with some of the affected hospitals in order to see the issue from the customer's end.
Results
After analyzing the data that was collected and scheduling a few meetings with some of the affected hospials it was determined that it took an average of 25-40 seconds for the tool to load. This was causing our internal and external customers a great deal of frustration. I continued to collect times in order to determine if there were any specific times that the tools loaded any slower.
Further Research
A developer was assigned to look into the issue and find some possible causes. Because this was an issue for both internal and external customers it became a high priority to be resolved.
Final Results
The developer found that the questions within the tools were being queried dozens of times causing the long load times. There is a large amount of questions within the tools and running all the queries was affecting the time it took to download the tool.