Clinic Progress Report
Data Visualization to Improve Clinical Evaluation
PROJECT OVERVIEW
COLLABORATOR
i-CARE Primary Care Network (PCN) HQ
FOCUS
Present Clinical Data
Communicate Network Narrative
DELIVERABLES
Data Visualisation Tools
Presentation Slides
CHALLENGE PREAMBLE
i-CARE Primary Care Network (PCN) is a network of General Practitioner (GP) clinics that aims to deliver better chronic care to patients. In that endeavour, data analytics is paramount. As part of its yearly evaluation process, staff from i-CARE HQ will sift through large volumes of patient chronic health data in a document known as the Chronic Disease Registry (CDR). They clean up, consolidate and present the final data to the network of over 40 General Practitioners (GPs) and clinic partners.
Xylon Health, a consultant to i-CARE PCN, was tasked to consider how the past 3 years worth of patient data (since the inception of i-CARE) might be presented with the expressed purposes of:
1. Encouraging better efforts among the doctors in patient data capturing (process indicators)
2. Improving clinical control in patients' chronic health indicators (outcome indicators)
RESEARCH PROCESS
As the project was on a tight timeline to meet the Quarterly PCN Meeting in about a month's time, I urgently needed to dive deep in studying and understanding how the data was currently presented and the clinical implications of how certain indicators or parameters were visualized.
Here were some of my observations during my analysis of the status quo:
Indicator-Centered
The performance of each clinic is determined by their fulfillment of various indicators. Process indicators are measured by % of patient data captured while outcome indicators are measured by % of patients who meet the criteria for good clinical control (for their chronic illness).
Benchmarking Within PCN
The benchmarking is done within the PCN so that the doctors have a sense of where they stand among the clinics in the same network.
Internal Historical Performance
There were also charts benchmarking a clinic's recent performance against the previous years. The intent of a set of personal graphs for each clinic is to help GPs identify possible areas of lapses or improvements.
ANALYSIS AND INSIGHTS
My gut feel was that even though the relevant was technically represented visually, it was anything but helpful for intervention. Incidentally, this thought was corroborated by the HQ staff during conversation.
The claims were that, upon looking at the charts, most of the doctors acknowledge the numbers but are unsure of what to follow up on. However, with the lack of ready, available feedback from the doctors to understand this issue, I had to rely on this hypothesis: there is possibly a form of 'decision paralysis' among the doctors, either from being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information or from being unclear of what the data is really saying amidst the 'noise'.
In my analysis, I presented the following findings to my directors (to their agreement):
1
Data Verbosity: Lack of Focus
The PCN HQ's revealed approach to 'presenting everything as it is' lacks focus. There is a need to draw doctors' attention to the most important points of information.
2
Data Presentation: Lack of Narrative
The data has always been presented to the GPs numerically as it is, without any supporting qualitative interpretation. There is a need to frame the data meaningfully into a narrative.
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
How might we present data in a manner that is useful for GPs?
DESIGN FRAMEWORK
It was crucial to draft a framework that serves as guidelines for structuring data presentation.
These questions highlight what GPs should know and take away from data presented:
BENCHMARK
"Where do I actually stand compared to...?"
TRAJECTORY
"How have I improved?"
"In which areas and to what extent?"
GAPS
"Where am I not meeting expectations?"
"Which gaps deserve more attention?"
IMPERATIVE
"What does this mean for me?
"What can I act on?"
DATA VISUALISATION TOOLS
DELIVERABLE CONCEPT
CLINIC PROGRESS REPORTS
Incorporating new data visualisation tools in a communication medium.
REPORT WALKTHROUGH
Title page: Communicates report's intent to summarize the clinic's performance indicators.
Left (Top): Director's Foreword
Left (Bottom): Targeted feedback for clinic - salient points highlight most important aspects of clinic's performance, accompanied by comments from HQ
Right: Introduction of visual tools and how to use
Left: Strip figures for clinic's benchmarking within PCN; blue strips represent process indicators while yellow strips represent outcome indicators
Right: Square figures for clinic's internal benchmarking based on latest performance
Left: Scatter plot to outline clinic's historical performance, i.e. this clinic joined the PCN in 2019 and therefore has 2 points of data, showing improvement from previous year across all indicators
Right: PCN's programmes and products to promote strategic improvement within clinics
IMPACT
Presentation to i-CARE PCN at Quarterly Meeting
I presented the visual tools and reports to the GPs during the 2021 Q1 Quarterly Meeting.
This was the first encounter they had with the tool so while many of the doctors had positive feedback for the new visualization methods, some needed time to process the report at their own time after the session. Of the GPs who had provided feedback, majority of them noted that the tools made it clear to them which areas of their chronic care provision needed improvement and which areas they could celebrate over having done well.
So far, i-CARE PCN has continued the use of this report independently in the years 2022 and 2023. They have even improved their process of generating these clinic reports using code to fill out the strip and square figures automatically.
Presentation to Ministry of Health, Office of Healthcare Transformation (MOHT)
I had the privilege of sharing this tool with the Ministry of Health Office of Healthcare Transformation (MOHT) during a PCN council meeting weeks after the Quarterly meeting. The council recognized i-CARE PCN's self-driven efforts in innovating its processes and expressed an overwhelmingly positive reception to the implementation of the data tools and reports.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
PROJECT DETAILS
Roles | Strategy and Presentation, Data Visualization
Partner | i-CARE Primary Care Network HQ
Duration | 5 weeks
ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
Strategy and Presentation
- Synthesized framework and overarching strategy for data presentation
- Presented data visual tools to i-CARE PCN at Quarterly Meeting (Q1, 2021)
- Presented data visual tools to Ministry of Health, Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT) at PCN Council Meeting
Data Visualization
- Conceptualized and developed data visual tools via Illustrator
- Conceptualized and composed clinic progress reports