# Every call, with the whole story Heaps · Post Discharge Care – case study by Seemant Shekhar. https://www.seemant.design/work/every-call-with-the-whole-story Care Coaches call patients in the 90 days after they leave hospital, about 100 calls a day each. I led the redesign of their tool so every call starts with context and ends without a long write-up. _Screens are blurred under NDA. I’m happy to walk through the real designs in a conversation._ - **Role**: Led design - **Team**: 2 designers I lead, a PM, engineering from kickoff - **Users**: Care Coaches and program managers - **Status**: Shipped - **Areas of influence**: Research: interviews and call recordings; Information architecture and flows; Dashboard and in-call screens; Hands-on high fidelity - **Highlights**: More patients reached each day; Shorter calls on lean protocol days; Every decision traced to research ## 01. The problem **Under five minutes per patient, and the tool kept getting in the way.** 100+ Care Coaches across 35+ clients make 10,000+ calls a day. Past calls were hard to find, patient details sat in a collapsed bar, and every call stepped through every section. ### What was in the way - **Past calls were hard to find**: Coaches dug through history before dialling so the patient wouldn’t feel cold-called. That prep cut into calls per day. - **No sense of progress**: Nothing showed what was left to cover in the call. - **Mandatory detours**: Sections like Vitals had to be stepped through even when they didn’t apply. - **Actions scattered**: Reschedule, readmission and feedback were small icons in a corner. - Image: The old in-call Symptoms screen with tabs, a collapsed patient bar and small action icons at the bottom. Before: the old in-call screen. Patient details were hidden at the bottom. ## 02. Listening to the work **Interviews tell you what people remember. Recordings show what happens.** We interviewed 10 Care Coaches and 4 program managers, then listened to recordings of real calls. We acted on what both sources agreed on: 11 decisions, each traced to research. ### The 11 decisions, by stage - **Planning the day**: A dashboard built around today, a "completed today" counter, saved filters. - **Before the call**: A Past Activity screen with true connects, outcome tags and hospitalisation history. - **During the call**: A guided flow, a fixed patient bar, Vitals in a slide-out, one-click "Call Dropped". - **After the call**: Smart notes with auto-captured chips and a per-client checklist. ## 03. The dashboard **Built around one question: what do I need to do today?** Calls to make, backlog and completed today sit at the top. Coaches used to ask their managers how many calls they’d done; now they see it. The queue splits into To do, Rescheduled and Not connected. ### Why we didn’t sort by risk - **The decision we didn’t make**: We didn’t sort by risk. A low-risk patient can still be having a problem, and we only know once we talk to them. Clients who want to prioritise use a risk filter. - Image: New Followup Dashboard with Overall and Me toggle, Calls to Make, Backlog and Completed Today, and To do, Not Connected and Rescheduled tabs. Workload and progress at a glance. Blurred under NDA. ## 04. Past Activity **Know the patient’s story before you dial.** The screen before every call: the care plan timeline, a True Connects filter that hides unanswered attempts, outcome tags like Physician Escalation, and what this call needs to cover. ### Two constraints that shaped it - **A separate screen, not a side panel**: Get informed first, then focus completely on how the patient is today. - **Built for real screens**: Coaches work on older monitors, about 1280 wide with as little as 560px usable height. Everything important sits above the fold. - Image: Past Activity screen with the Active Care Plan timeline, True Connects filter, a Physician Escalation tag and the tasks for this touchpoint. The full story, then today’s tasks, then Start Call. Blurred under NDA. ## 05. A guided call flow **Strict where it matters clinically, flexible where conversations wander.** The left navigation is the call’s checklist, in clinical order: an alarming symptom leads to a physician escalation before anything else. Sections appear only when the protocol day, client rules or discharge summary need them, so calls on lean protocol days got noticeably shorter. ### Three smaller details - **Patient bar fixed at the top**: Context is always visible. - **Vitals in a slide-out**: Available, without taking space on a small screen. - **Floating notes**: Capture anything said out of order; it reappears in the right section. - Image: In-call Symptoms screen with the left navigation checklist, the patient info bar at the top and Add Vitals. The checklist on the left, the patient always at the top. Blurred under NDA. ## 06. Smart wrap-up **The system already knew what happened.** Calls took minutes, but coaches then retraced every section to write a summary. Every Next or Submit already told us what happened, so those outcomes now appear as chips in Call Notes. A checklist is set per client, and one click saves a dropped call. - Image: Call Notes screen with auto-captured chips, a Followup Done and Delight Call checklist, and Call Dropped in the top bar. Notes start with a summary already there. Blurred under NDA. ## 07. The result **More patients reached, every day.** After release, Care Coaches reached more patients each day, with less time spent preparing for and writing up calls. Everything shipped together, so I can’t isolate each change. ### What I’d do differently - **What I’d do differently**: Measure before launch: prep time, wrap-up time, calls per hour and the true-connect rate. - **And a guardrail**: Track the escalation rate for alarming symptoms. More calls should never mean less careful calls. - Image (BEFORE): The old in-call screen. The old in-call screen. - Image (AFTER): The new in-call Symptoms screen. The redesigned in-call screen, blurred under NDA. --- Next case study: [From Excel to applause](https://www.seemant.design/work/from-excel-to-applause)