Hospital Leader Rounding
The Intelligent, Actionable Leader Rounding platform was designed to elevate patient experience by empowering hospital leaders to actively engage with patients and families during their stay. Leadership rounding is a proven strategy to positively impact patient satisfaction, improve care quality, and increase HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) scores. However, the traditional approach relied heavily on fragmented communication, limited data visibility, and subjective, paper-based workflows.
This project focused on creating a responsive, data-informed application to help healthcare leaders consistently capture patient feedback, resolve service gaps in real time, and drive measurable improvement in patient outcomes and survey results.
category:
Design, Develop
services:
Figma, HTML, CSS
The Problem
Healthcare leaders needed a modern, consistent way to round on patients, collect feedback, and take action — before patients left the facility. Without a centralized system, leaders:
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- Lacked real-time visibility into patient perceptions and satisfaction.
- Could not easily prioritize or track rounds.
- Missed opportunities for proactive service recovery.
- Faced inconsistent rounding practices across teams.
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These gaps negatively impacted patient experience, HCAHPS scores, and ultimately CMS reimbursements tied to those scores.
The Solution
The Intelligent, Actionable Leader Rounding solution addressed these gaps by:
- Providing a structured, guided workflow for patient rounds.
- Enabling real-time feedback collection directly from patients and families.
- Generating smart alerts for immediate follow-up by appropriate departments.
- Offering performance analytics for leadership to monitor trends and drive improvements.
- Delivering a responsive web-based experience optimized for tablet and desktop.
With this system, leaders could consistently engage patients, quickly resolve service issues, and improve the perception of care before patients left the hospital.
UX Research
The Research Phase
- User Interviews: Conducted with hospital leaders and patient experience staff.
- Focus Groups: Virtual sessions with SMEs and client hospital representatives.
- Expert Consultations: Engaged an HCAHPS specialist and analytics experts.
- Observations: Shadowed leaders during real rounds to understand workflows.
Key Findings
- Leaders often lacked quick access to relevant patient history and pending recovery issues.
- Paper and verbal methods made it difficult to standardize data collection.
- Staff needed more actionable insights during and after rounds.
- Service recovery was often delayed due to slow or missing communication.
These findings directly influenced the design of the platform’s workflows, prioritization system, and notification features.
Design Process
Early Ideation & Sketches
Initial sketches focused on:
- Simplifying the rounding workflow.
- Giving leaders immediate access to patient history.
- Structuring guided questions for consistency.
- Enabling real-time recovery alerts.
System Diagram
The platform needed to integrate with:
- Patient Management
- Scheduling
- Question Management
- Recovery & Alert Systems
- Analytics
- User Management
Wireframes & Prototyping
Low-fidelity wireframes were tested internally to validate:
- Rounding list flows.
- Smart alert creation.
- Real-time status tracking.
- Tablet-first interaction patterns.
High-Fidelity Prototypes
The prototypes were built in Figma, iterated with users, and refined for usability:
- Responsive design for seamless tablet and desktop use.
- Rounding Status Dashboard to visualize progress across rounds.
- Patient Questionnaires with branching logic.
- Real-time Alerts generated directly from rounding sessions.
- Leader Analytics providing trend analysis and actionable insights.
Prototypes were reviewed with leadership and users to secure alignment before handoff to development.
Final Design Highlights
The final solution delivered a focused set of features designed to make leader rounding more actionable, efficient, and patient-centered. Each feature directly addressed user needs uncovered during research and testing.
- Rounding List — Automated list of patients organized by status (On Deck, Completed, Suspended).
- Patient Information & History — Immediate access to patient background and previous rounds.
- Guided Questionnaires — Standardized prompts for capturing patient and family feedback.
- Recovery Alerts — On-the-spot creation of recovery alerts routed to responsible staff.
- Rounding Status Overview — Clear indicators for completed rounds, recovery in progress, and patient sentiment.
- Leader Analytics Dashboard — Real-time performance metrics and historical trends.
- Mobile Optimized — Designed specifically for tablet use during rounds.
Together, these features streamlined the leader rounding process, enabling healthcare teams to proactively improve patient experience while still at the point of care.
Outcome
The new platform transformed the leader rounding process from a fragmented, manual effort into a consistent, actionable system:
- Leaders could proactively address patient concerns during care.
- Teams gained visibility into recovery efforts and open issues.
- HCAHPS scores improved by promoting early intervention and improving the patient experience.
- Staff adopted a more standardized and transparent rounding workflow.
Reflection
This project reinforced the importance of designing for both frontline staff and leadership needs. By grounding the solution in user research and real-world observations, the final product addressed key pain points while maintaining simplicity for busy healthcare professionals. The result was a tool that directly improved patient experience, staff effectiveness, and system-wide accountability.
Marketing Information
Intelligent, Actionable Leader Rounding
Leader Rounding recognizes the importance of the patient and family experience in building the brand and reputation. Rounding provides a proactive approach to managing patient experience while the patient is still in the facility’s care. The web-based leader rounding solution employs a user-centered design to guide staff communication with patients and their families. As feedback and real-time observation are captured, smart notifications are generated and delivered to appropriate staff for immediate action. The result is proactive service recovery and improved engagement throughout each patient’s experience.
- Measure | Capture Patient Feedback and Observations
- Captures patient and family perceptions through guided discussion. By adding leader observations, specific service opportunities are identified for prompt resolution.
- Analyze | Assess and Aggregate Performance in Real-Time
- Provides a snapshot of performance and service needs in real time. Analytics guide immediate service recovery needs proactively and quantify improvement needs retrospectively.
- Take Action | Drive Effective Service Recovery at the Point of Care
- Assigns service recovery opportunities while establishing a level of urgency. Immediately push alerts to the department and staff for prompt response and resolution.
