Why Bad UX in Healthcare Comes at a High Cost
I. When UX Fails, It Costs More Than You Think
Most MedTech teams don’t realize how expensive bad UX really is until it starts hitting their operations from all sides. What begins as a few extra support tickets can quickly spiral into longer onboarding times, frustrated users, delayed feature rollouts, and when it’s serious, compliance issues that stall the entire roadmap. These aren’t abstract risks. They’re the direct result of unclear interfaces, inconsistent workflows, and systems that don’t scale with complexity.
In healthcare, UX is never just cosmetic. It’s functional. It guides behavior, shapes clinical decision-making, and reinforces (or undermines) trust in the product. Poor UX doesn’t just create inefficiencies. It silently erodes the reliability and safety of the system, especially when clinicians are expected to work across multiple platforms or modules under pressure.
One of the clearest examples of UX failure with real-world consequences is the 2020 rollout of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' new electronic health record (EHR) system. According to a 2022 report by the Office of Inspector General, the system failed to deliver over 11,000 clinical orders due to a technical flaw in how it handled unprocessed data. Clinicians weren’t notified of the issue because the interface gave no indication that anything had gone wrong. This breakdown led to at least 149 documented incidents of patient harm, one of them categorized as major. The problem wasn’t just technical; it was experience-driven. Users couldn’t see, interpret, or act on critical information because the system didn’t tell them it existed.
This is what happens when UX is treated as a surface layer instead of a core part of system design. The real cost of bad UX isn’t limited to a few usability complaints. It shows up in patient safety, regulatory risk, brand damage, and lost time that product teams can’t afford to waste.
II. Why UX Problems Hide Until It's Too Late
In healthcare technology, user experience (UX) issues often remain unnoticed until they manifest as significant operational challenges. Unlike overt system failures, poor UX doesn't always trigger immediate alarms. Instead, its effects accumulate subtly, leading to increased clinician workload, workflow inefficiencies, and, in severe cases, patient safety risks.
One common scenario involves mismatches between electronic health record (EHR) systems and clinical workflows. For instance, a physician might enter critical instructions into a field not visible to laboratory staff, resulting in unperformed tests. Such oversights stem from design flaws that fail to align with real-world use cases. Moreover, EHR systems can inadvertently contribute to medication errors. A systematic review highlighted that poorly designed interfaces, such as confusing dosage displays, have been linked to patient overdoses. These design shortcomings compromise both usability and medication safety .
Alert fatigue is another consequence of suboptimal UX. When clinicians are bombarded with excessive or irrelevant alerts, they may become desensitized, potentially overlooking critical warnings. This phenomenon underscores the need for thoughtful alert system design to ensure that vital information captures attention without overwhelming users. Interoperability issues further exacerbate UX challenges. Inadequate communication between different EHR components or systems can hinder access to essential patient information, disrupting care continuity and increasing the likelihood of errors.
These examples illustrate that UX problems in healthcare settings are often systemic, rooted in design decisions that don't account for the complexities of clinical environments. Addressing these issues requires a proactive approach, emphasizing user-centered design principles and continuous feedback from frontline healthcare professionals.
III. Support Costs Don’t Lie, UX Debt Always Comes Due
When user experience falls short in MedTech products, the ripple effect shows up in the one place every executive eventually feels: support costs. Poorly designed interfaces are hard to learn, harder to use consistently, and often require human intervention just to function smoothly across workflows. The result? Higher ticket volumes, longer onboarding timelines, and overwhelmed training teams.
This isn’t a theoretical burden. Frontline users in healthcare systems spend hours each week trying to navigate clunky digital tools, and it’s costing the system millions. A 2023 study published in JAMA Network Open found that primary care physicians in the U.S. spend more than 4.5 hours per day interacting with electronic health records (EHRs), with more than half of that time spent after clinic hours. Much of this work includes non-clinical tasks like message triage, documentation, and troubleshooting workflow problems. These inefficiencies aren't just bad for morale, they’re expensive.
Beyond wasted time, poor UX also drives unnecessary hiring. Organizations often add more IT staff, trainers, or onboarding specialists just to bridge the usability gap. Instead of fixing the root issue, a fractured or non-intuitive interface, they staff around it. That’s not scale. That’s survival mode.
In parallel, executives are increasingly recognizing this drag. In a 2024 Juno Health survey, healthcare leaders ranked EHR usability (not AI, not telehealth) as their top IT concern. Why? Because when systems are hard to use, everything slows down: adoption, rollout, compliance, even clinical performance.
These costs aren’t always visible in the product roadmap, but they show up in budget reviews, HR meetings, and performance reports. They reduce margins, slow growth, and create friction between teams. And they’re completely avoidable with the right design governance in place.
IV. Regulatory Risk: When Poor UX Design Becomes a Legal Problem
In healthcare, design flaws don’t just lead to frustrated users, they can open the door to serious legal and regulatory consequences. Unlike consumer tech, where a confusing interface might just cost you a customer, in MedTech it could lead to misdiagnosis, improper use of a device, or even patient harm. That’s why user experience must be treated as a compliance issue, not just a design challenge.
Regulatory bodies are already watching
The FDA has made its stance clear: user interface design is a safety concern. In its guidance document Applying Human Factors and Usability Engineering to Medical Devices, the agency highlights how small UX missteps, like unclear labeling or poor feedback cues, can lead to major user errors. These aren’t theoretical concerns. They’re the kinds of errors that prompt recalls, lawsuits, and brand damage.
A real-world example with real-world consequences
The risks are not hypothetical. In 2021, Philips Respironics recalled millions of ventilators and CPAP machines due to safety concerns around degraded soundproofing foam. But the fallout didn’t stop at the recall itself. By April 2024, a U.S. federal court entered a consent decree against the company, legally forcing them to halt the sale and manufacture of certain devices until they implemented extensive remediation plans. The financial and reputational costs of that decision were enormous and many of the root issues involved both materials and how the devices were used in real-world scenarios.
UX and HIPAA: A less obvious, equally dangerous pitfall
Even outside of physical devices, the way a digital interface is designed can be a compliance minefield. Take HIPAA, for instance. If a patient portal isn’t intuitive, say, it makes it too easy to share Protected Health Information (PHI) without realizing it, that can be flagged as a privacy breach. And under HIPAA’s Breach Notification Rule, even an unintentional data leak can result in costly investigations, fines, and public disclosure requirements.
The takeaway? UX has legal weight
Good UX isn’t just about elegance or efficiency, it’s a safeguard. When design decisions are rushed, inconsistent, or left in the hands of siloed teams, the risk doesn’t stay confined to user friction. It snowballs into regulatory exposure, product recalls, and costly remediation efforts. For MedTech companies, the ROI of good UX includes risk mitigation and that’s not just smart business. It’s survival.
V. Final Thought: Bad UX Isn’t Just a User Problem, It’s a Business Liability
MedTech leaders are often laser-focused on innovation, building new features, expanding product lines, and hitting milestones. But somewhere in the push to ship, user experience often becomes an afterthought. And when it does, the consequences aren’t just internal. They ripple across the entire product lifecycle.
Poor UX adds drag at every level: longer onboarding, more support tickets, compliance complications, slower market adoption, and in some cases, patient harm. The data is there. The risk is measurable. And still, many teams treat UX as a “nice to have”, something to fix later, when the next version ships or funding is secured.
The truth is, every ignored usability issue becomes a hidden tax on your business. It might not show up on a balance sheet, but it will show up in dropped workflows, physician complaints, and lost trust. And in regulated environments, the margin for error is razor-thin. One design oversight can snowball into a legal case, a product recall, or worse, patient injury. But it doesn’t have to go that way...
Fixing UX at scale doesn’t mean blowing up your roadmap or rebuilding from scratch. It means creating the right systems behind the screens: governed design patterns, cross-functional ownership, and infrastructure that scales with your teams and your tech. When UX works, it works for everyone; the patient, the clinician, the regulator, and the product owner. If you're starting to feel these pain points, or you're worried they're lurking beneath the surface, it’s time to rethink how UX fits into your growth strategy. Let’s make UX a core part of your product’s competitive edge.
Talk to our team about how to build healthcare products that scale with clarity, trust, and compliance baked in from the start.