DispatchHealth Aftercare Instructions
DispatchHealth is an at-home health care provider that was looking at ways to improve their patient experience and outcomes. They identified their aftercare instructions as a key pain-point for both providers and patients.
Historically, aftercare instructions had been typed in a Word document and printed on mobile printers to leave with patients, but due to consistent technical issues and cost associated with the printers, as well as an exceptionally low rate of compliance (providers simply weren’t leaving instructions for patients at all), they decided to change their approach to these instructions entirely.
I was tasked with finding a solution that would be easy to use for providers, and easy to read for patients. The key areas that I identified were:
Things that were often repeated that could be printed directly to save time on writing
Adding check boxes to highlight relevant information for specific patients
All relevant notes on the inside so providers could photograph easily for upload to their medical portal, Athena
More space for handwritten notes
Adhering to accessibility guidelines for Medicare and Medicaid around font sizes and reading level
First round design
In the initial concept (right), the Brand team and I decided that a tri-fold brochure with a tearaway panel would be the ideal design for an aftercare leave-behind. The goal was to have a the panel with all scheduled follow-up appointments be removable for patients to put somewhere visible, like a fridge, and a larger piece that would have more details about the appointment.
After meeting with the Clinical team, this format was deemed too costly and unnecessary. The design was modified by another designer on the Brand team into a bi-fold brochure for the initial print run.
Final Design
After the initial print run, the Brand team met with the Clinical team again to discuss improvements. A survey was sent out to providers to identify sections that were useful, not useful, or could use improvement. Compliance rates improved drastically over the mobile printing instructions, and most providers surveyed found the instructions easy to use and helpful for their patients.
I used this data to make final revisions, including adding some new sections required by the legal department, and updating existing sections to simplify language or add more useful information. The final design is now in use by all providers.
