Rural Access to Care

Communities in rural areas do not always have access to adequate healthcare. A business partner working on Medicaid brought the problem to our Human Centered Design team to investigate what issues their members were facing across the country. The also looked to us to design new approaches to get rural residents timely care.

PROBLEM

Communities in rural areas face significant barriers with regard to seeking and receiving healthcare. There is often a lack of providers in rural areas. Residents sometimes avoid seeking care since it requires them to take time off work and travel long distances. After a health event they also tend to skip follow-up treatment. 

PROCESS

In the first phase of the project the design team visited five states and spoke with local experts, residents and providers in order to get a overview of barriers rural residents faced across the country.  

We found that for any solution it was vital to have local buy-in. So in the next phase of research we selected a single region to research and co-design possible solutions with local providers.

SOLUTION

We were able to design several regionally specific concepts to address access to rural care that helped our business partners demonstrate a commitment to supporting rural members. We also used the methods developed during the project to assist other business teams in identifying possible solutions to pilot for rural regions in their states.

APPROACHES:   
Problem Framing | Ethnographic Research | Journey Mapping | Ecosystem mapping | Co-design | Concept Development | Service Design | Visual Communication