LA CLINICA DEL PUEBLO
Oct 2019 - Dec 2019
TL;DR
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LCDP's communication platforms impact medical interpreter's work.
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Maintaining information using multiple systems and channels has led to data integrity concerns.
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Without a platform for patients, there is an increased burden on the support staff to coordinate interpretation services.
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Lack of cross-system integration led to a decrease in productivity and an increase in the risk of errors.
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My Role: UX Research, Leading focus group
Skills: User Research, Problem Solving, Contextual Inquiry
CLIENT
La Clinica Del Pueblo (LCDP) is a health center based in the D.C Metro Area that provides medical interpretation (translation) services to assist patients with limited proficiency in English. Some of the daily processes include but are not limited to:
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1. Interacting with patients
2. Scheduling appointments for patients
3. Keeping records of interpretation sessions
4. Verifying Medical Insurances of the patients
RESEARCH GOAL
Identify areas of improvement in the information sharing processes, data workflows and provide LCDP with a better understanding.
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Key research questions and areas:
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What are the notable behaviors, technologies, and barriers that impact the day-to-day operations of key stakeholders?
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Identify needs and opportunities to inform the product design strategy.
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Observe and understand the current information-sharing process.
Methodology
Over the course of 5 weeks, we collected data by conducting focus groups and in-context interviews. Further, we consolidated the data to identify patterns and themes, which were eventually used to generate user experience models.
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Phase 1: Focus groups with all the stakeholders
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Phase 2: 60-minutes contextual interviews with 10 participants
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Phase 3: Interpretation and clustering data
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Phase 4: Experience models
Focus groups to define the problem
Our initial research questions were open-ended:
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Who are the major stakeholders involved in carrying out day-to-day operations?
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How are these operations carried out?
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What is the current information-sharing process?
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Do the existing tools support the needs of the stakeholders?
Based on our conversations, we identified three key organizational needs.
Coordination
Maintaining effective communication between multiple parties is challenging
Data Privacy
Privacy is critical, especially given they work with vulnerable populations
Organizational Health
Keeping accurate records is essential to LCDP
Who are responsible?
Manager
Oversees interpretation service and supervises medical interpreters and support staff.
Medical Interpreter
Conducts medical interpretation with patients in the DC metro area.
SUPPORT STAFF
Responsible for setting up appointments and coordinating interpretation service.
Recruitment and interviews
We recruited participants in terms of role, years worked at LCDP, location, and expertise with tools to represent a spectrum of stakeholders.
FROM Data to insight
Affinity diagrams and experience models organized our interview data and allowed us to extract actionable insights related to user workflow, technology use, user expectations, and frustrations.
KEY FINDINGS
Using Whatsapp as the key mode of communication
A common theme across all the participants was the use of WhatsApp as the key mode of communication among other channels such as email, calls, and text messages.
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However, the use of WhatsApp caused the following problems:
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It was difficult to keep track of appointments and schedules through WhatsApp groups and that led to confusion and delays in providing interpretation services.
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A missed call was equivalent to a missed appointment which meant a loss of service.
"I call it information highway. The amount of information I have to manage is overwhelming."
Ineffective patient-interpreter coordination
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WhatsApp messages are supposedly encrypted; however, the patients believed otherwise and wanted a secure channel instead to protect their privacy.
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It is interesting to note that "Phone-call" was the only way of notifying the cancellation of interpretation from either side (Patient or interpreter). The Patient-Interpreter communication was not streamlined.
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Patients without access to phone or WhatsApp had to rely on family members to set up appointments.
Lack of cross-system integration
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The platforms and tools used at LCDP did not integrate effectively with one another. As a result, employees at LCDP had to transfer data from one system to another manually, decreasing productivity and increasing the risk of errors.
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There was also a potential risk of entering the data more than once.
DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS
LCDP patient portal
The patient portal would provide patients with more control over their appointments and notify LCDP and interpreters if a patient's appointment status changes.
Standardized appointment system
A new appointment system that standardizes the appointment request into a single format, meaning support staff would only need to check one system for new requests.
IMPACT
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Our research assisted new and incoming interpreters in the training and understanding of the processes at LCDP.
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LCDP implemented a patient portal.