Service & Product
Design
Designing a chronic condition support program to provide multi-channel proactive condition support
Problem to Solve
Members with unmanaged chronic conditions, particularly heart disease, are among Homeward's highest-risk and highest-cost members. Without proactive, structured support between visits, these members default to the ED when their health worsens, resulting in poor outcomes for the member and driving avoidable costs that directly impact Homeward's total cost of care. Homeward lacked a dedicated program to manage these members longitudinally and had no way to support them between visits on their own terms.
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Goal
Design a Chronic Condition Support program that proactively manages members with heart disease, establishing Homeward as their first call when they need care rather than the ED. The program would create a structured, longitudinal care relationship built around the member's condition and goals, while opening SMS as a new care channel to provide flexible, low-burden support between visits on the member's terms.
My Role
As Lead Service Designer, I owned this project across service design, product management, and product design. I defined requirements with clinical operations, designed the end-to-end service and staff workflows, and collaborated directly with engineering to implement changes in our internal systems.
My Role:
Lead Service Designer & Product Designer
Methods: ​
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Primary research with members
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Service design & blueprinting
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Product Design & implementation
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Change Management & Workflow updates
Tools:
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Figma
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Figjam
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Figma Make
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Google Slides
The Impact
The Chronic Condition Support program demonstrated that proactive, condition-specific outreach significantly outperformed general engagement. While standard campaigns achieved a 20% visit scheduling rate, CCS outreach achieved 35% with a high visit completion rate, validating that timely, relevant support drives stronger member engagement than broad outreach alone.
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The program also proved the value of SMS as a care delivery channel. I led the launch of SMS as a net new capability, owning the product design and collaborating with the PM on the Twilio partnership to stand up a HIPAA-compliant messaging experience that extended Homeward's care beyond visits for the first time.
The Process: Member Research
I began with member research to understand where support was most needed when managing chronic conditions, and how members felt about using SMS to discuss their health.
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Key Insights
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Members wanted a judgment-free space for small questions. The moments between visits were filled with uncertainty — small symptoms, medication questions, things members felt weren't "serious enough" to call about. SMS resonated as the right channel for these moments precisely because it felt low-stakes and accessible, as long as the issue wasn't urgent.
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Members wanted consistency, not just care. One of the most painful parts of navigating healthcare for these members was having to re-tell their story every time they interacted with someone new. Members didn't just want clinical support — they wanted a person who knew them, remembered them, and genuinely cared about their progress over time. This directly shaped how we designed the care relationship within the CCS program.
The Blueprint
With member needs defined, I translated research insights directly into a service blueprint that mapped the full CCS experience across member touchpoints, staff workflows, and system requirements. The blueprint became the single source of alignment across clinical operations, product, and engineering, replacing fragmented conversations with a shared, concrete picture of what we were building, how it would be delivered, and what each team was responsible for. ​​
Product Design: SMS Experience
With SMS established as a core care channel, I designed a HIPAA-compliant messaging experience within Homeward's internal tools. Rather than adding a separate communication workflow, SMS was embedded directly into the care manager's existing tasks and workflows, surfacing at the right moments in the cadence agreed upon between the care manager and member. To reduce documentation burden and keep messages feeling personal, AI generated draft messages based on the context of prior conversations, giving care managers a relevant, personalized starting point to send or refine before reaching out.
My Learnings ​
​Designing for members managing chronic conditions reinforced that access to care is only meaningful if it's easy to use. This population was not going to download an app or navigate a patient portal, so meeting them where they already were, on their phones via SMS, was the only way to make support genuinely accessible. The lesson was that multi-channel care delivery is not about offering more options, it is about choosing the right channel for the right population and making engagement feel effortless rather than like another task to manage. Technology should reduce the distance between a member and their care team, not add steps to cross it.
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