Designing for Medical Homes: Territory map

This semester, my team is collaborating with Mayo clinic and Continuum to work on service design for Medical Homes & improving primary care system. We’ve been working on the project from mid-September this year and will be working on it for the rest of the semester until December. The team consists of Maria Emerson, Brigit Kang, Priyanka Shetye, Wei Zhou, and myself.

Initially, we got together for brainstorming sessions to get a consistent understanding of what primary care system is and map out which areas need to be addressed. It was really interesting for us, because each member had a unique background where the health systems were different. From this phase, we generated our hunt statement, which aims

To structure existing primary care systems in a new way to give patients a more complete health care support system.

Then, we created a territory map which visualizes our understanding of the current practices in primary care system.

Territory Map

We put the patient as our main focus.

We put the patient as our main focus.

Surrounding the patient are other groups of people, such as primary care physicians, specialists, nurses, insurance agents, family, and more. However we put more importance in relationship among the patients, primary care physicians ,and specialists, because of the amount of communication and interaction among them and their importance in building patient's experience with primary care systems.

Surrounding the patient are other groups of people, such as primary care physicians, specialists, nurses, insurance agents, family, and more. However we put more importance in relationship among the patients, primary care physicians ,and specialists, because of the amount of communication and interaction among them and their importance in building patient's experience with primary care systems.

There are related physical places, such as home, primary doctor's office, and hospital.

There are related physical places, such as home, primary doctor

We realized that there are different factors that surround and affect elements throughout the territory map in one way or another. We broke these down into society, culture, diagnosis, technology, management, political, and economic factors. For example, economic factors include financial plan and budget, while culture factors include religion, behavior patterns, ethnicity, and more.

We realized that there are different factors that surround and affect elements throughout the territory map in one way or another. We broke these down into society, culture, diagnosis, technology, management, political, and economic factors. For example, economic factors include financial plan and budget, while culture factors include religion, behavior patterns, ethnicity, and more.

The white dotted lines are used to show the involved process in primary care system.Communication among different groups of people (primary care physicians, specialists, patients, hospitals, etc), scheduling appointments, transfer of medical-related documents, and transportation between physical places are some examples of work involved to make the system run.

The white dotted lines are used to show the involved process in primary care system. Communication among different groups of people (primary care physicians, specialists, patients, hospitals, etc), scheduling appointments, transfer of medical-related documents, and transportation between physical places are some examples of work involved to make the system run.

This is a complicated mix and layout, and we plan to focus on this as the main problem as we continue into the project.

This is a complicated mix and layout, and there is discontinuity throughout. We plan to focus on this as the main problem as we continue into the project.

What’s next

Now that we have identified and narrowed down on a problematic area, we would like to validate and also explore this area different methods, such as role-playing, Contextual Inquiry, shadowing, interviews, Think Alouds, and survey.

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Published:
09.28.08 / 6am
Category:
Designing for Medical Homes, Medical home, Primary Care, Service Design