Ascension Rx

In 2020, leadership asked us to help define a vision for pharmacy services at Ascension. Design had mostly been seen as making UI. This was design futures work.

We led a year-long research study into how people saw pharmacy and used their medication. Through dscout, we recruited 21 people for the hard cases, like complex medication, sensitivity to cost and older age, and followed 15 of them through a diary study.

What came out was a business vision and strategy centered on patients. We even co-designed the Rx label with them. And we saw it show up in practice. In 2021, Ascension opened an $8M Pharmacy Services Center in Austin (Ascension). In 2026, its Illinois pharmacies began offering free medication to uninsured, low-income patients through Dispensary of Hope (Ascension).

Our strategy was better basics. We were going to market, and the gravity of the business was around the basics, so we picked our battles. Three themes came out of the research, proactive, human and tailored, and everything we designed carried them.

What we heard

A patient in the ED was asked by a nurse whether she’d stopped taking her medication at some point. “Actually yeah,” she said. “I had it delivered from my pharmacy and it didn’t get here on time.”

1. “It seems that my doctor, my pharmacy and insurance are not talking to each other.”

2. “I don't know what changed but in the past I could order my refills a few days early, but it seems in the last few months I can't even order it a day early…”

3. “Let's say Kroger doesn't have my medication and I go to a HEB pharmacy and they don't have it, then I might just go with CVS. And really… because it's a pandemic… it's a nightmare.”

4. “This medication is so that I don't have a heart attack or stroke. It should be 100% automatically renewed no matter what.”

5. “Prescriptions is just a nightmare.”

We found nine things worth pursuing:

1. Proactively communicate delays, shortages and failures
2. Communicate out-of-pocket costs early
3. Predict critical medication needs and make them available just in time
4. Coordinate the care team's communication with the patient
5. Make it easy to know which medicines need refilling
6. Proactively refill, renew and process prior authorization
7. Review policies and procedures to ensure medicine continuity
8. Convey prescription status and location clearly and accessibly
9. Build relationships between patient and pharmacy

These formed three themes that every touchpoint should carry: proactive, human and tailored.

What we designed

Better basics

We sorted ideas into the basics, better basics and disrupters. We were going to market, and the gravity of the business was around the basics. We had to pick our battles, so we focused on better basics. There were some disrupter concepts, like education, that we still pushed on.