Building a Digital Caregiver Platform for Post-Acute Care
\ CASE STUDY
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
“Frances’ ability to listen, synthesize, and create a strategic digital innovation roadmap is unmatched. Her blend of high-level problem-solving skills, keen intuition and creativity has been an invaluable asset to my company and team. She is a consummate collaborator who is always ‘on’.”
— Shelly Eckenroth, SVP Communications, Branding and Experience, Select Medical
Background
Select Medical is one of the nation's largest providers of specialized post-acute care. With more than 40,000 employees operating or supporting 100+ hospitals specializing in long-term acute care, 17 inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, and nearly 1,500 outpatient centers offering physical, occupational, and occupational medicine services, Select Medical provides high-quality, patient-centered care to individuals recovering from illness, injury, or surgery across the country.
Select Medical recognized a critical gap in its patient ecosystem: the caregivers who support patients through post-acute recovery. Family members and loved ones navigating this journey face significant physical, emotional, and psychological demands, yet the tools to educate, empower, and support them through the healing process did not exist. To address that gap, Select Medical committed to building a new digital product that would put caregivers at the center of the recovery experience.
Select Medical engaged C\R Strategy Partners to bring that vision to life. Working with the Senior Vice President of Communications, Branding, and Experience and the Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, C\R designed and built CHET: a community-based caregiver application that gives caregivers the support, information, and connections they need to help their loved ones heal.
The Challenge
Caregivers had real and urgent needs, but no product had been built around them. The work surfaced four distinct problems to solve:
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Unmet caregiver needs: Caregivers of post-acute patients face significant physical, emotional, and psychological demands, yet they had little access to resources designed specifically for their role. The product had to deliver real support, not just information.
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Information gap: Caregivers needed condition-specific guidance to understand a loved one's diagnosis and prepare for home recovery, but trusted, organized resources were difficult to find and harder to navigate.
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Isolation and disconnection: Post-acute caregiving is often isolating. Families and friends who wanted to stay informed and involved during recovery had no structured way to do so, leaving caregivers without the support network they needed.
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Enterprise-scale ambition: Any product built had to prove its value in a focused pilot, then scale efficiently across Select Medical's network of 100+ hospitals and 1,500 outpatient centers, making architectural decisions as important as user experience ones.
Our Approach
C\R Strategy Partners applied its Aligned Innovation framework to design and build CHET, letting caregiver needs and Select Medical's enterprise goals drive every product decision. The engagement ran through four phases:
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Discovery – Engage Select Medical's executive leadership in a touchpoints workshop and validate product concepts with target caregivers to ground the product strategy in real need.
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Design – Design a consumer-grade caregiver experience around five core needs: support, communication, education, relationship connections, and trust, brought to life through an exclusive community, condition-specific recovery guides, curated patient stories, and a content search engine.
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Development – Manage platform development across a hybrid team spanning marketing, product, engineering, and sales, with C\R providing executive leadership in innovation management and overseeing a cloud-based architecture integrated with Select Medical's technology stack.
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Pilot – Pilot CHET at a Select Medical hospital, gather real-world caregiver feedback, and build the operational foundation for expanding the platform across Select Medical's national post-acute care network.
Learning & Outcomes
CHET addressed the caregiver experience directly, filling a gap that no existing product had been designed to close:
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Exclusive caregiver community: An online community gave caregivers a private space to keep family and friends updated on a loved one's recovery, reducing isolation and keeping support networks engaged throughout the healing process.
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Condition-specific recovery guides: Step-by-step guides covering stroke, brain injury, spinal cord injury, and more gave caregivers a trusted, accessible resource to prepare for a loved one's return home and long-term recovery.
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Searchable content engine: A purpose-built search tool aggregated and organized Select Medical's content library so caregivers could quickly find what they needed.
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Patient success stories: A curated video collection of patients and loved ones navigating the recovery process gave caregivers encouragement and real-world perspective at a difficult time.
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Cross-functional delivery: C\R worked across marketing, product, engineering, and sales to align customer needs with product outcomes.
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Scalable cloud architecture: A cloud-based architecture integrated with Select Medical's existing technology stack gave CHET a scalable, enterprise-grade foundation built for national expansion.
The Results
The CHET engagement produced a live digital product and established a new capability for Select Medical's caregiver network:
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CHET launched as a live product: A fully functional community-based caregiver application was designed, built, and launched.
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Five core caregiver needs addressed: The platform directly addressed the top needs identified in discovery: support, communication, education, relationship connections, and trust, in a single integrated product experience.
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Pilot launched, national scaling underway: CHET launched at one hospital and is expanding toward adoption across Select Medical's Post Acute Care Services nationally.
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Innovation capability established: A hybrid team model with internal and C\R experts delivered the platform and built Select Medical's capacity to continue evolving the product independently.