Canva-to-MyChart Field checklist

The message is part of the care experience.

This checklist is for population-health leaders, outreach teams, healthcare communications and marketing partners, and Epic/MyChart operations teams. Use it to move from a communication job to an understandable message, a tested visual asset, a real delivery path, and an owner for what happens next. It draws on one Jefferson implementation; the responsible local teams must set clinical decisions, policy, and operational choices.

Keep three kinds of decisions visible

The Jefferson implementation, current guidance, and your local choices can inform one another without being treated as the same thing.

• Implemented in Jefferson: During the March 2023 through January 2024 project period, Cole designed and built patient-facing messages, reusable visual assets, reusable Epic message templates, implementation documentation, and staff training for Population Health. The shared Canva files were generic and contained no PHI. Personalization, when needed, stayed in the authenticated Epic/MyChart workflow. Some Spanish variants existed, but their translation or validation method is not established here.
• Current guidance: Patient-portal communication should be understandable, usable across literacy and language needs, supported by equivalent text and non-color cues, tested on the receiving surface, and clear about non-urgent response expectations. Confirm current guidance with the responsible local teams and sources.
• Decide locally: Choose the communication job, source authority, eligible audience, approved channel, Epic/MyChart configuration, contacts, response path, review cadence, and measures that your organization can actually support.

1. Define the communication job

Write the operating brief before opening Canva. Record one answer in each row, then name the person or team who can change it.

Field	Record before design
Communication job	What care, service, or follow-up does this message help a person understand or start?
Audience	Who should receive it, including relevant literacy, preferred-language, low-vision, digital-access, or program considerations?
Source authority	Which clinical or program owner approves the factual wording, eligibility, timing, and required instructions?
Channel	Is the approved route a MyChart message, letter, telephone call, or a deliberate combination?
Operational owner	Who prepares, sends, routes, documents, and answers the message?
One primary patient action	What single next action should be easiest to find and complete?
Response expectation	How should a person ask a non-urgent question, and when should they expect a local response?

Keep supporting details subordinate to the one primary action. A message can link to instructions or offer a contact route, but a recipient should not have to choose among competing calls to action.

2. Write complete, understandable text before the image

The plain-text message is the source of meaning. Draft and review it before designing the graphic.

1. State the subject and the primary action in the opening lines.
2. Use short sentences, familiar words, and a useful heading hierarchy.
3. Say what the person should do, what to bring or expect, and how to get help.
4. Include the approved link, phone or callback route, and non-urgent response expectation.
5. Keep clinical or program detail to what a person needs for this action; send questions that require judgment to the named clinical or program owner.
6. Make the copy understandable if the image does not load, is cropped, is not translated, or is not visible to a screen reader.

Do not put an instruction only in an image. A recognizable headline, useful hierarchy, and intentional emphasis can make a message easier to scan, but an image does not replace equivalent text, qualified translation, screen-reader support, or an accommodation for low vision.

3. Design within the local system

Use Canva to make the approved message recognizable and usable, not to make a separate source of truth.

• Apply the local brand system: approved logo treatment, type, spacing, imagery, and color use. Confirm permission and the current brand guidance with the communications or marketing partner.
• Test text and important graphic elements for sufficient contrast. Color may provide intentional emphasis within a branded system, but meaning must remain in words, labels, structure, or another non-color cue.
• Check readability at the size and distance people will actually use. Consider plain language, literacy, large type, low vision, zoom, and reflow before export.
• Record the intended language and have the local qualified reviewer confirm meaning. Do not describe the historical Spanish variants as validated or assume one language set fits every audience.
• Provide an equivalent text description for informative imagery. Decorative imagery must not carry the action.
• Keep shared Canva files and exported assets generic: no patient names, identifiers, dates, or other PHI. Put patient-specific context only in the approved authenticated workflow.

4. Pair the asset with a real delivery workflow

The visual is one part of a message system. Verify the actual receiving surface and the local Epic/MyChart behavior rather than assuming a product default.

Delivery route	Confirm before sending	Owner to name locally
Epic/MyChart message	The approved recipient, subject, plain-text body, image or link behavior, response route, and documentation location. MyChart is a non-urgent portal channel; provider availability and response policies vary by organization.	Epic/MyChart operations and the clinical or program team
Letter	The print size, language, contact route, return or scheduling instructions, and what happens when portal delivery is unavailable.	Outreach and communications operations
Telephone	The caller identity, script, voicemail boundary, interpreter or accessibility route, callback handling, and documentation path.	Outreach team and program owner
Combined cadence	The order, handoff, suppression rule, and one primary action across channels.	Named program and outreach leads

Jefferson used reusable Epic message templates with visual assets and staff workflow support. The exact local template object, attachment behavior, routing, and scheduling-ticket behavior must be confirmed with the organization that operates its Epic environment. Do not copy a historical implementation as current Jefferson policy or as universal Epic behavior.

5. Test the message and the receiving experience

Test a realistic, non-production record and the workflow around it. Keep a short record of the tester, date, surface, language, and fix.

• Open every link, phone number, callback instruction, and QR code; confirm that each goes to the approved destination.
• Preview the exported asset at its actual dimensions. Check crop, scaling, file type, loading, and whether a meaningful detail is hidden on a small screen.
• Check text and graphical contrast, including states that are emphasized by color. Verify that labels and structure still communicate meaning without color.
• Read the equivalent text with the image hidden and with assistive technology or a plain-text view where available.
• Compare language versions for meaning, action, names, dates, and contact details with a qualified local reviewer. A historical Spanish variant is not evidence of validation.
• Test on the real portal, letter proof, and telephone workflow used by the program, including mobile and desktop views and the non-digital route.
• Confirm the response expectation: who receives a reply, what is documented, and how a person is routed when the question is urgent or requires clinical judgment.
• Remove sample data, live identifiers, and unnecessary PHI before a screenshot, handoff, or shared file leaves the approved environment.

6. Assign ownership through the message life cycle

Name an owner before launch; one person may hold more than one role, but the handoff should be visible.

Work	Owner to record
Patient response and practical questions	The team that monitors the approved channel, with coverage and escalation for clinical questions
Documentation	The person or team recording send, response, outcome, and follow-up in the local system
Clinical wording and care-gap requirements	The responsible clinical or program authority
Audience, eligibility, and outreach operations	The population-health or program owner who maintains the source list and workflow
Brand and communication review	The local communications or marketing partner
Epic/MyChart configuration and delivery behavior	The local Epic/MyChart operations team
Maintenance and review	The named template steward, with a review date and source check
Retirement	The owner who removes, archives, or clearly supersedes stale assets and near-duplicates
Measurement	The local improvement, program, or analytics owner who records definitions, denominators, time windows, and limits

Cole implemented the message layer and its reusable assets; he did not independently set clinical policy, own Jefferson's enterprise Epic environment, or control every surrounding workqueue and referral workflow. Keep those distinctions when adapting the story.

7. Measure what the local workflow can show

Choose measures with the people who own the work. Possible measures include delivery or rendering exceptions, replies, completed patient actions, unanswered questions, language or accessibility requests, documentation completeness, staff touches, and template retirement or reuse. Define the denominator, observation window, channel, and owner for every measure.

The Jefferson cross-device testing made the difference between a text-heavy receiving experience and a redesigned visual message inspectable; it was not a patient comprehension, accessibility-conformance, or response-rate study. Staff feedback that they valued and felt proud to use the materials is firsthand operational feedback, not a universal satisfaction result. Do not promise that a graphic or template causes a response, comprehension, trust, completion, or clinical outcome.

8. Launch review

Before the first approved send, confirm that:

• the communication job, audience, source authority, channel, operational owner, and one primary action are written down;
• complete, understandable plain text stands alone before the image is attached or linked;
• brand use, contrast, non-color cues, literacy, preferred language, qualified review, low-vision needs, and non-digital alternatives are addressed;
• links, contacts, crop, equivalent text, language meaning, mobile and desktop rendering, and response expectations were tested on the actual receiving surface;
• Epic/MyChart, letter, and telephone behavior match the local workflow, with no assumption about another organization's configuration;
• response, documentation, clinical, program, brand, Epic/MyChart, maintenance, retirement, and measurement owners are named; and
• the file set and test evidence contain no PHI or live identifiers, and stale versions have a clear retirement path.

Current sources for local review

Use current sources with the responsible local teams; they inform checks in this artifact but do not establish Jefferson policy or a promised outcome.

• ONC SAFER Guide: Clinician Communication
• W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
• HHS language-access guidance
• MyChart messaging help

Read Designing the Message as Care for the Jefferson implementation behind this checklist.