Enhancing Patient Form Compliance Through UX/UI Design Best Practices | OBERD

06/21/16

As the healthcare industry continues to move from a fee-for-service model toward a pay-for-value system, the effective and efficient collection of outcomes-based data is essential. The ability to capture large volumes of information regarding each individual patient, when coupled with emerging new tools for analyzing and reporting on that data, is laying the foundation for better decision making, better care and ultimately better value for patients. The deliberate application of user experience design (UX) and interface design (UI) best practices to these emerging tools can improve form compliance and ensure the gathering of actionable healthcare information.

Patient-Centered Design:

At the center of any effective experience design is the empathetic understanding of both the healthcare consumer and healthcare provider. In the design process, scenarios are identified regarding how various users may encounter and respond to a given interface, such as Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement (PROM) forms. Insightful design should deliver an experience to the patient that is welcoming and easily understood, while simultaneously driving robust data collection. Producing high form completion compliance rates is achieved when the process provides a uniform and pleasant experience from the moment a user opens a form all the way to completion. The reduction of cognitive loads achieved by user-centric design can increase completion rates by employing a singularity approach to each PROM question. OBERD forms, which utilize this “perception-reduction” approach, yield a 95-98% completion rate for all opened PROM forms.

Perceptually-reduced digital OBERD PROM form:

Standard paper PROM form:

Ultimately, the experience should reinforce the overall patient/physician relationship and healthcare experience. The ability to identify and quantify patient satisfaction with the care they receive will contribute to overall accounted value to the receiver of care. For physicians, designing an effective compliance tool for Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), and the new Quality Payment Program (QPP), depends upon efficient integration into the physician’s existing workflow. Successful creation and deployment of systems that reduce physician workflow demands and increase provider productivity can be advanced by thoughtful application of solid user-centric design.

Emerging Platforms:

While the healthcare industry continues to evolve, an ever growing spectrum of platforms and devices empower users to engage in ways that are radically impacting both experience design and wellness management. The emergence of new wearable devices, and the objective data they generate, mandates that forward-thinking healthcare design incorporate the collection and distribution of a new ecosystem of “intra-body ambient data,” such as pulse, blood pressure, and range of motion. This objectively measured data could be utilized to complement and compare against the subjective data reported by patients. These pervasive devices should not only be leveraged to continuously collect outcomes-based information, but also be harnessed to empower users to set personal goals for well-being.

Generating and sustaining high compliance rates for outcome-based reports is foundational to success in the emerging healthcare system and can be accelerated by good design. Capturing and utilizing health information in the very near future will depend upon using design best practices, which in turn will increase the quality of healthcare for consumers as well as ensuring reliable ROI to providers. OBERD remains at the forefront of developing innovative solutions that achieve both.

Keith Politte is an experience designer at OBERD. His interest lies at the intersection of business development, strategic communications and product development. As a long-time student of user-interface (UI) and user-experience (UX) design and all-around futurist, Keith's role at OBERD is to ensure our patient and physician-facing products blend functionality and innovation en route to smarter healthcare.

Keith's previous work at the Missouri School of Journalism included establishing collaborations with Apple and Adobe, which generated award winning student-facing initiatives including joint journalism/computer science competitions. Keith earned his BA in from Boston University and his JD from Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco.