I never mind when art suggestions come with an assignment – it’s just part of the job and I take it in stride because most of the time I can top it (not in a pompous, obnoxious way, but you know, this is my job, to come up with good ideas).
The article for American Medical News was about doctors being part of a new payment bundling plan from Medicare. Basically, Medicare would consider all the treatments (like doctor visits, diagnostics and hospital stay) associated with a certain ‘episode’ of care (like a heart attack) as one claim, make a payment to the hospital, and then the hospital would handle disbursing the funds respectively. The art director offered up the idea of a doctor’s office and a hospital tied together with a currency band. I thought their idea was good, actually. But, it turns out there’s really no way to draw a doctors office other than an office that says DOCTOR on it, and that’s not how I roll. Or at least I try not to roll that way.
I offered this alternative (along with the sketch of their idea) and they liked it. I think it worked nicely in terms of the bundling, with a subtler note that doctors could possibly get stuck on the deal.
