Responsive Design and the New Medicare.gov

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) launched a major redesign of the Medicare.gov website making content more accessible and easier for beneficiaries, their families, and caregivers to understand.

This redesign represents three major milestones:

1. Mobile: The redesign of Medicare.gov is our first full dive into mobile-friendly web design. We are using "responsive design" which is a new approach to web design that allows us to provide an optimal viewing experience on any device. This allows us to support traditional desktop PCs, tablets, and smartphones all from one URL and code base. That is, there is not a separate mobile or M-Dot website, but Medicare.gov itself is fully optimized when viewed on a mobile device.
2. Working Better: The migration of Medicare.gov to the Percussion content management system means that for the first time, all of CMS' public websites are managed using the same system. This greatly increases efficiencies and allows us to reuse the same management processes across all of our websites.
3. People First: This redesign fully embraced the principles of good web management and governance. It is the result of more than two years of research, design, and development work by CMS. Using call center questions, website analytics, and online survey results, CMS identified top user tasks including finding out what Medicare covers, cost and coordination of benefits information, and finding Medicare drug and health plans.

These changes take us strongly in the direction laid out in the Federal CIO's Digital Government Strategy. And the Digital Strategy will be a key driver of all of our web initiatives over the next 12-18 months.

Help us field test our site. Visit Medicare.gov on a smartphone or tablet and let us know what you think! What do you like and what can we work to improve?