SYNOPSIS healthcare
optimizing patient care with tailored after-care summaries
One of the biggest challenges within healthcare concerns how to best transmit important medical information to patients, while also ensuring their comprehension of care protocol and compliance. One strategy health organizations use is to give patients printed out clinical (or after-visit) summaries when they are checking out of a medical visit. The same information is also often available through patient health portals, ensuring that patients have access to the information at all times.
Clinical summaries provide an overview of the medical encounter, including progress notes, and may include instructions or recommended plans for medications or treatment. Many patients find the format and language in summaries confusing and overwhelming, and may only partially read them. When care summaries are not fulfilling their intended purpose this also poses both immediate and longterm effects on patient health.
Recognizing that clinical summaries may not be providing accessible healthcare information to all patients, many health organizations have updated aspects of their clinical summaries. Although these updates aim to promote patient healthcare knowledge, clinical summaries use a lot of jargon and do not demonstrate an awareness of how patients learn and process information, including medical information. Many patients fail to read these updated summaries precisely because the language is jargon heavy and seems irrelevant to their needs. My goal was to envision an application for processing clinical summaries in accessible and user-friendly formats to improve patient understanding and promote a greater partnership between patients and clinicians.
The dashboard
A clinical summary tailored to your needs: It is essential to think create a clinical summary that is patient-centered and make the patient feel supported upon leaving a healthcare visit or hospital stay. The clinical summary should serve the purpose of explaining important medical information, while also educating the patient and ensuring that they feel that they feel their health needs matter. I explored how healthcare organizations can update clinical summaries, making sure that they convey accurate information while also sharing information in a format that can be tailored to match a patient’s needs and level of comprehension.