Caring for Older Adults*

︎The WHA team sorts a stack of ‘intervention trading cards’ developed from the insights gathered in pre-workshop interviews.

Overview

In partnership with the West Health Accelerator at MGB (WHA), we were charged with learning about the current state of caring for older patients across the MGB health system, using the structure established by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) 4Ms Frameworks of an Age-Friendly Health System: Medication, What Matters, Mobility, and Mentation. (Medication was considered out of scope for our work). From there, we developed interventions that could be additive or improve existing workflows in these areas.

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Discovery

Our team interviewed over 60 providers and staff across Mass General Brigham hospitals to understand the current state of caring for older patients. These interviews shed light on the range of current practices across units through the health system, along with barriers to care and success stories that could be opportunities for further development and scaling. This discovery work focused on 3 of the 4 M’s. 
Role: interview providers; synthesis of feedback in Mural; presentation of insights to leadership



︎Affinity mapping of feedback gathered through provider interviews across MGB sites. Blurred for confidentiality.

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Co-Design Workshops & Prototyping

The gathered insights then shaped a set of ideation workshops that we hosted for the WHA team focused on ideating early interventions to address the mobility, mentation, and ‘what matters.’ We developed intervention ‘trading cards’ to review and prioritize existing processes and new ideas.

We left the workshops with a collection of early solution ideas, prioritized based on potential impact and feasibility. We then brought these ideas to WHA Champions—an interdisciplinary group of providers and staff based at different MGB institutions—to integrate these ideas into Quality Improvement (QI) pilots.
Role: lead workshop; design workshop materials; synthesize ideas post-workshop

︎Workshop exercise: In small groups, participants learned about existing ideas and interventions from across MGB. They then added in new ideas, prioritized, discussed, and evaluated them across an ‘Impact X Effort’ matrix to understand what might be doable.

Select Workshop Interventions for QI Pilots

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Mobility: Speedometer Expansion & Distance Markers 

The Speedometer was incorporated into select QI pilots at Cooley-Dickinson Hospital and Brigham & Women’s Faulkner Hospital. Read more about the Speedometer development here. Distance markers were produced as removable wall decals for use in the hospital hallway and in alignment with JH-HLM. The markers were designed as 25’, 75’, 125’, 175’, 225’ and 250’ to align with JH-HLM levels, and give patients 25’ and 50’ increments to mobilize while fitting the design of the hallway (a single hallway where patients could enter at multiple points).   

︎Distance marker wall decals

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Mentation: Delirium Activity Sheets

Supporting a Champion team focused on improving delirium management and building off a workshop idea, I designed Delirium  Activity Sheets as part of a QI pilot focused on offering activity boxes to patients. The sheets are used to re-orient patients to time and place while offering simple cognitive exercises to support management of delirium. 


︎Delirium Activity Sheets
*GDUSA Health + Wellness Design Awards 2026 Winner

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What Matters

Learn more about the work on ‘What Matters’ here.

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Testing

West Health Accelerator Champions completed an initial round of pilots across select sites in the MGB system. The results are summarized below: 

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Scaling & Next Steps 

As the West Health Accelerator program continues to roll out across the Mass General Brigham system, we are supporting their QI Champions program with design and design research support. Delirium activity sheets, the Speedometer tool, distance marker, and ‘What Matters’ workflow re-design continue to be adopted by individual sites across the system.