Empowering medical professionals with a patient-centered approach

Client: Parkview Medical Center

Deliverables: Interactive dashboard; Survey app; Knowledge graph; Narrowcasting solution

The challenge

People become patients when they face a physical or mental issue. They contact medical centers with hopes and expectations about how this can be solved.

For medical centers it is important to have happy and satisfied patients who value their services. This is because mental wellbeing leads to better clinical outcomes. Satisfied patients also have fewer complaints, which causes less stress within medical centers and professionals. Patient satisfaction is increasingly important, especially with a raised focus on value-based healthcare.

Having a good overview of a patient’s experience can be challenging for medical centers, mainly because they often have many different departments that are not well connected. Thus, data about the overall patient experience is usually scattered. In addition, it is often unclear to the staff how patients value their work and which factors influence their perception.

We created a platform that provides insight into the holistic patient experience, satisfaction, and underlying causes. Now, medical centers can include the patient’s voice as an active participant both in day-to-day operations and long-term decisions.

Value delivered

We ensure that the voice of the patient is a big part of every decision taken at the medical center, leading to more communication between professionals and ensuring patient wellbeing from a more holistic view.

The platform helps Parkview put the patient experience at the core of their organization, centering patients’ voices and prioritizing their desires.

Disclaimer: This hypothetical case for the fictitious client “Parkview Medical Center” combines C°F’s work on three past projects for three clients we can’t disclose.

Phases and toolkit items used

Stakeholder strategy workshop

Project kick-off

Quantitative user research

Qualitative research

User & stakeholder interviews

Product strategy workshop

Technology exploration

Ideation sessions

Concept design & visualization

Style guide & design rationale

Design support & art direction

Onboarding

Background

We involved various stakeholders across the hospital, including healthcare professionals, in developing the desired outcome of our solution. We conducted interviews and gathered data on patient treatment, building facilities, and online sentiments. So, we understood the patient’s journey and what influences the patient’s perception.

We made a taxonomy of the different phases of the patient journey and explored ways to gather relevant experience data for each phase. To ensure a comprehensive view, we also defined key moments to survey patients during their treatment, enhancing our understanding of their perception of the medical center.

Concept

Oneplatformabouttheperceptionofpatients

The patient experience platform enables Parkview to monitor patients’ perceptions of the care they provide daily. The platform shows this in a summary and allows users to dive into the data and discover what aspects satisfy or dissatisfy patients. Users have the opportunity to explore data encompassing the entire medical center, while also gaining insights into the performance of each individual department.

The underlying data is provided by several sources, as well as a custom-created survey tool that can collect additional patient feedback on-site or online.

The platform allows the staff to shift their focus from efficiency and quality of care to ensuring satisfaction for patients who value their care, leading to a different motivator for the staff.

Datafrommultiplesources

The platform uses several data inputs to assemble an overarching view of the patient’s experience and perception. We therefore collect data from various sources, such as:

Patient treatment journey data: days in hospital, return rates, etc.
Smart building & facility data: waiting times per department, usage of facilities, temperature, humidity and noise levels
Patient satisfaction & feedback: satisfaction surveys on location, post-appointment feedback requests by email
Web scraping & sentiment analysis: news aggregation, review websites (medical or generic), Patient forums, and social media monitoring

Patient’spulse

We converted all parameters into a marble design that we called the “Patient’s Pulse”. With this marble design, we wanted to represent the hospital group as a living, breathing organism: a dynamic shape that changes and evolves, giving a sense of satisfaction at a glance. Also, because various parameters visualized in the marble don’t always relate directly to each other, visualizing them in this form shows a relationship between parameters but not necessarily a direct relation. If desired, healthcare professionals can also interact with the marble and discover the exact value of each parameter over time. Each department receives its own marble, which shows how we can track different parts of the patient journey.

Survey

The platform provides patients with a user-friendly survey tool to share their feelings and experiences. With intuitive design and clear instructions, patients can easily navigate through the survey, ensuring that their feedback is both comprehensive and insightful. Whether it’s rating their overall satisfaction, providing specific feedback on their interactions with healthcare professionals, or highlighting areas for enhancement, the platform facilitates meaningful engagement and fosters a culture of patient-centered care.

Dashboard

The dashboard of the platform provides the freedom to read the data in multiple ways: a quick (and interactive) glance at the performance of different collections in the explore mode, and an in-depth view on the overall patient wellbeing throughout time in the report pages.

Sentiment is shown over time for patients; the color distribution based on multiple datasets shows if sentiment has changed, or is moving in the right direction for the patient’s welfare.

Patientwellbeing

Different comparisons are available to inform better decision making:

historical overviews to see how the patient is progressing,
and comparisons with other patients to see where there are areas that require more attention.

Aggregateview

A wider look at the patient experience maps out each stage of their journey and their satisfaction with the treatment they received at each point. This provides a more holistic view of the patient’s progress.

Facilitiessatisfaction

In addition to patient wellbeing, hospital staff can also see the satisfaction levels for the facility as a whole. Parameters such as sanitary facilities and administrative processes can be rated by patients, giving the staff insights into areas of improvement around the hospital. The feedback is location-specific, providing a very detailed overview of the performance of each room and floor in the facility.

Narrowcasting

To promote transparency, accountability, and an improved overall patient experience within the medical center, the platform can display results via narrowcasting.

Results

With this platform, medical facilities can ensure the patient’s voice is heard in every department meeting, making it clear to everyone how patients value the services they provide. When patients feel listened to and valued, they are more likely to trust their providers, adhere to treatment plans, prioritize preventive screenings, and prevent unnecessary complaints. In turn, this approach can reduce the medical center’s overall healthcare expenditure. By fostering a positive patient experience, this platform can contribute to a more cost-effective and sustainable healthcare system, allowing medical centers to shift their focus from just efficiency and quality to ensuring satisfied patients, leading to a different motivator for the staff.

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