Healthcare
B2B
End-to-end Design
Shipped
PBACO is a population health startup that helps doctors to provide higher quality value-based care for patients while lowering healthcare costs. Their old method for tracking patient care involved a complex paper-based system that was struggling to keep up with the company's rapid expansion.
I led the design of their web-based patient tracking platform to streamline operations, ensure greater tracking, and set the foundations for future growth.
Disclaimer: The following case study contains no PHI or sensitive information.
Role
Research, userflow mapping, wireframes,
high-fidelity mockups, interactive prototypes, documentation, product support
Team
• UX Designer (me)
• Engineers x4
• Product Manager
• CIO
Timeline
2020 - 2021
Impact
• 250k lives managed in first year
• 15k average weekly actions after first year
• $1.2m savings achieved in first year
BACKGROUND
So everyone was having a rough time slinging paper around.
PBACO analyzes millions of lines of patient claims to create actionable reports that tell physicians which patients they should treat. Since the beginning, these paper reports had been delivered in person via face-to-face meetings, but this system was struggling to scale as the number of physicians and patients grew.
INSIGHT A
Paper reports require lots of driving…and waiting.
When I interviewed field consultants, they reported spending roughly 2 hours on the road every day traveling between offices to deliver reports. Naturally, traffic is a given when driving around South Florida.
Once arriving at the offices, they would often have to wait up to 30 minutes in order to meet with the doctors.
INSIGHT B
Managing report data is manually intensive.
When those paper reports were finally returned to the company, employees had to input the results into several large excel spreadsheets by hand. This involved wrangling over 300 excel spreadsheets that track over 250,000 patient encounters.
INSIGHT C
Care providers struggle to handle extra work.
According to internal surveys, 64% of member practices felt they were understaffed.
In interviewing several physicians, they felt like they didn't have enough time to properly work the reports.
"Honestly it just sits on my desk half the time."
INSIGHT D
No-show patients falling through the cracks.
In addition to the reasons above, the paper system was not good at encouraging patient follow-ups. Roughly 32% of patients who miss a scheduled appointment do not return over the following 18 months, increasing the risk of chronic conditions and higher healthcare costs.
PROBLEM
The paper-based patient tracking system is causing bottlenecks for employees and care providers, leading to worse health outcomes for patients.
PLANNING
Defining the different user types for the platform
There are three principle user groups that the Caretracker needed to accomodate:
Creating a closed-loop system
To solve the problem of patients not being followed-up with after appointment cancellations, I was inspired by ticketing software like Zendesk that I utilized as product support manager. The user would be prompted to follow-up with patients until reaching a conclusion based on a variety of outcomes.
Through interviewing employees and staff members at care practices, I charted out the workflow for scheduling and following up with patients that the system would have to accommodate.
SOLUTIONS
Reducing bottlenecks with real-time list of high-risk patients
Addresses:
Physical bottlenecks
Paper reports were replaced with an online, HIPAA-secure platform where the company could directly upload lists of patients that needed to be scheduled. This helped to greatly reduce the amount of time employees spent on the road and in waiting rooms.
Encouraging patient follow-ups through a closed-loop system
Addresses:
No-show patients
The patient tracking system helped to reduce long-term no-shows from patients through periodically prompting the user to contact and follow up with them. This helped to ensure that patients don't fall through the cracks and receive regular, preventative care.
Helping doctors delegate responsibilities among staff
Addresses:
Busy doctors
The platform enabled doctors or office managers to easily delegate patient lists among staff members or to an external call center. Users with admin roles are also able to see patient and staff analytics to measure performance. This added flexibility helped practices overcome the workflow overhead that comes with patient tracking.
Data Upload functionality
Addresses:
Excel Hell
Users also have a HIPAA-secure method to upload patient lists from practices' EHRs directly onto the platform, replacing the need to manually update hundreds of excel spreadsheets. This reduces the pains of handling physical paper documents, and reduces the risk of PHI leakage.
Approval acquired!
After several iterations and countless meetings with various stakeholders, I was able to develop the Caretracker design to a point where it gained the approval of our ACO staff, providers and developers. This gave the CIO what they needed to get the green light from the CEO to begin development of the project.
Outcomes
The new online patient tracking system launched in 2021 and led to positive outcomes for employees, care providers and patients:
• 250k lives managed in first year
• 15k average weekly actions after first year
• $1.2m savings achieved in first year
TAKEAWAYS
The future is gonna be FHIR 🔥
At the time of building the project, FHIR interoperability standards weren't were they needed to be in order for the team to enable direct EHR integration (on top of members using over 30 different EHRs). In the future, when the standard matures and is better enforced, I believe this is the next step for the platform, which will greatly reduce or eliminate the need for double entry.
Overall, I'm glad that I was able to help transform a complex, outdated workflow into a streamlined experience that benefit colleagues, doctors and their patients.
