APTIHEALTH / 2024
Care plan design case study
Role
Interaction design
User research
Prototyping & testing
Information architecture
UX strategy
Timeline
6 months
I led the design and rollout of a Care Plan feature that standardized patient care processes and improved cross-team collaboration
Collaborators
Engineering, Product, Clinical, Operations
Summary
I designed the Care Plan, a critical tool that allows aptihealth's mental health providers to collaboratively track and manage patient care. The care plan is essentially a roadmap for providers, enabling them to document patient goals, monitor patient progress, and ensure alignment with other members of a patient's care team. Through in-depth provider interviews and close collaboration with clinical, operations, engineering, and product teams, I created a solution that enhances care coordination, streamlines workflows, and has been widely recognized for its usability and effectiveness.
Problem: The lack of a cohesive care plan resulted in inconsistent and inefficient patient care
Before the Care Plan was introduced, Aptihealth providers had limited in-platform tools to track patient care, forcing many to rely on external spreadsheets. As a result, less than 45% of patients had documented goals in the platform. This lack of a structured care plan led to several key challenges:
1. Inconsistent Care Standards
Providers were left to document patient goals and progress in their own ways, with only a free-text section available in the platform and no guidance on formatting or clinical best practices.
2. Lack of provider collaboration
There was no way for providers to see who else was on a patient’s care team or what goals the patient was working on with other specialists. This siloed approach resulted in a fragmented, incomplete view of a patient’s care journey.
3. Limited Data on Patient Outcomes
The absence of structured goal-tracking made it difficult to measure patient progress and demonstrate the platform’s effectiveness to insurance companies.
4. Inefficient workflows
Without a centralized tool, providers had to manually sift through their notes from past sessions to assess patient progress, which added unnecessary friction to their daily workflows.
Objectives
Streamline provider workflows
Provide a centralized, user-friendly platform to record and track patient goals.
Facilitate care team collaboration
Enable seamless communication among providers on a patient's care team.
Support patient care delivery
Deliver a comprehensive snapshot of patient demographics, diagnoses, and progress
Ensure compliance with care standards
Align with Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards and organizational clinical standards
My Role
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Conducting user research to identify pain points and requirements.
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Collaborating with engineers, clinicians, operations teams, and product managers to ensure alignment on business and leadership goals
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Iterating on designs based on user feedback and technical constraints.
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Conducted and led affinity mapping sessions during the pilot phase to prioritize user feedback.
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Managed pilot testing with 20 providers, analyzed feedback, and refined the design for wider rollout.
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Synthesized user feedback into actionable themes using FigJam and created a shared understanding among cross-functional teams.
Provider Interviews
The first step was conducting in-depth interviews with providers to uncover their unique workflows and pain points. Aptihealth has four distinct provider types, each playing a different role in patient care and thus needing to use the care plan in distinct ways. To ensure I was meeting all providers' needs with the design, I spoke with representatives from each group, gathering insights into their desires and challenges for the care plan and patient goal-tracking specifically.
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​I then synthesized their feedback into an affinity map, categorizing key themes and pain points. This analysis was compiled into a detailed research document, which I shared with engineering and product teams. By aligning everyone on provider needs early in the process, we ensured that the final care plan would be both clinically effective and seamlessly integrated into provider workflows.
Example insights from the research document:
Discovery Discussions with Clinical Leadership, Operations, Engineering, and Product
Designing the care plan required more than just understanding provider needs—I also had to align with clinical leadership, operations, and engineering to ensure feasibility and compliance. These discussions helped define critical requirements: What care standards must the care plan follow? How should we handle different editing permissions for provider groups? What data needed to be captured to support both clinical workflows and operational reporting?
Through these conversations, we outlined the core structure of the care plan, including key sections such as demographics, care team, care goals, patient-articulated goals, patient strengths, medical cautions, and a summary of responses from the patient’s initial clinical assessment.
Iterative Design Process
Given the complexity of the care plan—each section having distinct workflows and permission settings—we took an incremental approach to development. Breaking the project into phases allowed us to refine each section iteratively. Once the MVP design was finalized, I created interactive prototypes in CodePen to demonstrate responsive behaviors and ensure a seamless user experience.
Example workflow for adding/editing/removing care plan goals:
Final Design
Adding a new patient goal as a behavioral health specialist
The structured format guides providers in setting clear, standardized goals while allowing flexibility for personalized care
Editing, achieving or removing a care plan objective
These streamlined workflows ensure accurate tracking and help maintain a clear record of the patient’s progress over time.
Adding provider-specific details
Providers can define their unique treatment modality, appointment frequency, and session duration based on the patient’s acuity level, ensuring care team alignment by making treatment approaches transparent.
Final Rollout and Results
Ultimately, we launched the care plan to 200+ providers at aptihealth and received widespread positive feedback from providers on its intuitiveness and impact. My work on the care plan earned me the Employee of Excellence award for prioritizing user needs and creating a solution that resonates with providers.
Outcomes:
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Increased documentation of patient goals from 43% to 77% over 3 months
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Improved collaboration among care team members (measured in number of emails exchanged across care team members)
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Enhanced ability to track patient outcomes for insurance contracts
Some positive feedback from providers:
Thank you for the new care plan and the tools to support clinical excellence.
I love the new care plan! Thank you for your time and for the upgrade.
This care plan is very user friendly and the drop downs [in the goals section] are helpful and clear.
I've found that the care plan is very easy to use - thank you!