Patient Care Summary
Empowering Registered Nurses to deliver better 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, Inconsistent Documentation
Registered nurses (RNs) faced a daily struggle when preparing for patient care—particularly around preparing for patient contact. The patient chart, their primary source of clinical information, was fragmented across multiple sections, requiring significant time & effort navigate.
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
Nurses averaged 60 to 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
To solve this, our cross-functional team pursued a SMART on FHIR application approach, building a Patient Care Summary that consolidated the fragmented data ecosystem into a single, actionable view. This strategy broke free from Cerner's limitations while future-proofing our product design strategy for long-term scalability.
In close collaboration with product & tech partners, I led the design vision, mapping the entire user experience—starting from day one. This included wireframes and product roadmaps that guided over a year of design, development, and iteration.
How might we surface critical patient information & facilitate sound clinical responses to improve patient outcomes?
Initial Layout Wireframes
Cross Functional Discovery: Grounding Design in Real User Needs
Partnering with UX research, I participated in generative user interviews, shadowing nurses and carefully documenting pain points. These insights shaped our design approach, supported by interview snapshots and a comprehensive workflow digram—critical artifacts for continuous discovery.
Interview Snapshot
Workflow Map
Key insights
Heavy Cognitive Load: Nurses relied on mental notes & offhand documentation to track critical patient details
Workflow bottlenecks: Charting delays, missing discharge summaries, & scattered documentation slowed outreach
Unmet User Needs: No system alerted nurses about missed treatments, requiring, "hunting" or manual tracking
Designing the Solution: From Insight to Impact
With a clear vision coupled alongside real user insights, I led the design of a unified patient view—The RN Patient Care Summary—consolidating critical data and interaction elements into a single page.
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!"