In a primary care health clinic, providers before, after, and throughout their shifts retrieve archival patient information and document new empirical data from each patient encounter into an electronic medical record (EMR). This documentation, called charting, contributes to ever increasing workload and provider burnout. While a provider may not perceive it to be, “charting” is writing work, and the clinic is a writing space. In this article, we use the concept of writing stewardship to examine a needs analysis of workflow in a family health center. We argue that the addition of writing stewards would shift the burden of documentation practices to distribute writing throughout the clinic, not primarily on providers. The implications of this are twofold: first, that writing studies researchers can help clinics write more efficiently and, second, that patient outcomes improve as a result of improved clinical communication.

This study audits and analyzes the online content provided by the U.S. government for The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). In order to both educate Americans about the ACA and enroll those who needed insurance into plans offered by the U.S. and/or state governments, policy analysts, communication designers, and web developers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) created and published a substantial array of online content. These policy statements, infographics, blog posts, videos, forms, and other resources were designed to engage the public and translate the complexities of the ACA into usable information for patients. However, a content audit and analysis of ACA-related online content reveals the ways that this content did not provide a navigational structure for patients newly insured (or already insured) to find them, as over time the e-commerce function of the site buried its educational purpose. From this analysis, designers of online public policy information will gain a better understanding of how to design as a part of a strategy to balance multiple, critical user roles and tasks.