Patient Care Summary

Empowering Registered Nurses to deliver quality patient care—reducing clicks by 85%, surfacing real time insight, & transforming fragmented data into a clear, actionable story.

Company

Role

Year

DaVita

Design Lead

2023 - 2024

The Challenge

Fragmented Data, Inefficient Workflows & Documentation

Preparing for patient care was a daily obstacle for Registered Nurses (RNs). The patient chart—intended to be a single source of truth—was fragmented across multiple pages. What should have been a simple task to confidently prepare for patient outreach devolved into fact finding missions requiring significant time & effort.

Lack of Centralized Data

Critical information like discharge summaries & care plans, were spread across the chart—making it difficult for nurses to get a holistic view.

Excessive Clicks

RNs spent 60-70 clicks per patient, supplemented with handwritten notes and personal tracking systems to stay organized.

Inconsistent Documentation

Without standardized documentation practices in place, information was recorded in various formats, complicating care preparation.

The Vision

A Unified Patient Care Summary

Alongside product & tech partners, I set the design vision—a future where RNs didn't need to chase data and instead are free to focus on patient care. To get there, we pursued a SMART on FHIR solution that would consolidate critical information into a single view while breaking free of the legacy EHR system.

This rethinking of the user experience enabled us to go from zero to one. I worked closely with product & tech to establish core values for the experience, then mapped ecosystem via wireframes and experience flows.

The co-creation process allowed us to define a product roadmap that would span more than a year of iteration of design and development. It ensured the Patient Care Summary was forward-looking, scalable, and built to support clinical outcomes & team alignment.

Initial Layout Wireframes

Cross Functional Discovery

Grounding Design in Real User Needs

To build a truly meaningful product, I wanted to understand the system and the people navigating it. I partnered closely with UX research to conduct generative interviews in an effort to capture how fragmented tools and inconsistent documentation slowed their ability to deliver care.

Instead of treating interviews as isolated sessions, I used them to build a living foundation for continuous discovery. I transformed raw insights into interview snapshots & a comprehensive workflow diagram that gave the team shared visibility into user pain points and opportunity areas. In addition to building stakeholder alignment, the artifacts became core tools for prioritization, iteration, and knowledge sharing throughout the project.

Registered Nurse

Quick Facts

ESKD RN

Telehealth

Experience (5+ years)

Cerner Only

"If I don't have the discharge summary before making contact, I'm going to do a deep dive and try to get information—it means a lot to my patients."

Insights

Discharge summary information determines effecitiveness of patient contact

Uses excel sheet to keep track of information not readily available within system

Opportunities

Provide single click entry to discharge summary information during hospitalization

Capture most important information to prepare for patient contact

Workflow Map

Designing the Solution

Transforming Patient Care

Working with a clear product vision & grounded in user insights, I led the design of the Patient Care Summary—a unified, actionable workspace that consolidated critical patient data and tasks onto a single, streamlined page.

We set out to do more than declutter & organize—the goal was to reframe the experience around how RNs process their work while prioritizing patient care. Over the course of the year, every design decision was guided by our values via a simple question: How might we help nurses spend less time navigating a legacy EHR & spend more time building meaningful relationships with their patients?

Centralized Data

We streamlined 60+ clicks into a single view, surfacing the most relevant patient details informing RNs to provide care.

Localized Workflow Actions

I introduced embedded powerforms & designed a global sidebar component, ensuring local task completion.

Clear Information Hierarchy

Collaborating with product stakeholders, we stayed in touch with users to understand the most important data.

Solution Quickview

Results

The initial designs for the Patient Care Summary went live in Q2 2024, with new capabilities added monthly. According to feedback from users, each addition provides immense value in helping the RNs prepare for patient contact to provide quality care. In total, we've reduced preparation for patient contact from 50-60 clicks to less than 10.

40%

Time reduction in patient contact prep

"Before the Patient Care Summary, I needed to review at least 7 different screens to get the information showing here. Prepping for a contact was a difficult process where I ended up writing down a lot of information about the patient. I love all of these updates…thank you so much!"

"The patient overview area consolidated the essential information prior to the call. Having the patient's data first and foremost on the page saves me so much time. The PCS is everything we've asked for—a dream come true!"