Improving quality of follow-up services for heart transplant receivers

Medicine has made enormous progress, and today, many people with heart disease can hope for a new life thanks to a heart transplant. However, concerning the service design, there still seems to be a lot to do to improve the patients’ quality of life once their transplant has been successful. Our paper aims at investigating perceptions and needs characterizing the life of heart transplant patients, and it does so by adopting qualitative methodologies. Inspired by the human-centered approach, typical of Design Thinking, our paper offers insights to improve follow-up services. Its results feature the patients' needs, grouped in specific categories. Results also highlight the information asymmetry between the medical staff and the patients and some protection and organizational issues (working hours, fragmented processes). Our paper suggests some suitable solutions to improve the follow-up services in the specific context of the Veneto Region (specifically, the Centers for Heart Transplant of the Hospitals of Padua and Verona in northern Italy). Our analysis brings out the value of those solutions that meet the profound safety need experienced by the patients. The limitations of our research concern the specificity of the context investigated, the selection of the interviewees and the incomplete adoption of the Design Thinking approach during the Covid-19 emergency; its managerial implications concern the possibility of the practical implementation of one or more solutions, entering a closer link with the institutional stakeholders and the service providers.