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hello@jeremysmith.pro

Enterprise Healthcare · Optum

Unified Clinical
Operations Portal.

Role

Product Strategy & Orchestration

Scale

90,000+ Physicians and their staff

Timeline

7 Months

Capabilities

System Mapping, Architecture

Optum Portal Patient Detail

01 · System Friction

The Cognitive Load Crisis.

The primary systemic failure within the Care Delivery Organization (CDO) was administrative friction. Physician workflows were dictated by redundant data entry across fragmented clinical IT solutions. Lack of transparency into quality metrics and multiple authentication layers compounded the cognitive load.

The mandate was not simply to redesign an interface, but to architect a unified portal framework in a highly complex southwestern market that could scale nationwide. The system had to accommodate the distinct daily habits and task sequences of four primary user groups, spanning both clinical and administrative staff.

System Topology

PHR QUALITY AUTH BEFORE AFTER

02 · Orchestration

Mapping the Unknowns.

Execution required aligning the technical constraints of three disparate data pipelines: Patient Health Records (PHR), Risk & Quality Management, and Prior Authorization. We conducted rigorous workflow telemetry across the user groups to identify the exact technical dependencies tying their workstreams together.

The core alignment artifacts were comprehensive Service Blueprints generated for each specific role. This documentation served as the operational contract between clinical requirements and engineering capacity. It resolved technical complications upstream, defined a strict MVP scope, and communicated a clear roadmap for functionality rollout to the CDO leadership.

Journey

Situation
Awareness
Action
Conclusion

Time

45-75 minutes

45-75 minutes

10 minutes

10 minutes

5 minutes

2 minutes

5 minutes

PRM

Liz starts her day by waking at 6am and taking her dog for a walk.
She listens to her favorite podcast during her walk.

She makes breakfast when they get home, and catches up on news and social media interests while she eats.

After getting ready for the day, she goes into her home office by 8am.

Liz first checks email for any communications from her supervisor, team, or offices she supports.

There are a couple items of low priority, including an incoming flu clinic initiative at one of her locations.

She then opens the Optum Provider Portal to see current clinic measures progress and any messages that came in overnight.

She has a few messages from her clinics.

Dr. Laura Tsunade is wanting to make sure her RAF scores are where they need to be and is requesting YEA forms for her whole patient panel.

Liz types 'Tsunade' into the search bar at the top of the portal.

As she types, recommendations appear matching each letter she types (after the 3rd character is entered). Liz ignores this and after entering'Tsunade' hits the 'Enter' key on her keyboard.

She is taken to a Results page that lists any doctors matching her search text.

There are 3 Dr. Tsunades returned in the Results list.

Each doctor listing shows the doctor's name, region, office name and address, and a button to view their details.

Liz clicks on Dr. Laura Tsunade's name and is taken to her details page.

On the doctor details page there is a button to generate a list of all oustanding patient YEA / attestation forms for the doctor being viewed.
Liz clicks that button.

This results in a new page loading with the list of all of Dr. Laura Tsunade's outstanding patient YEA / attestation forms.

There are options to print the results (selected or all; separate pages for each patient), export an Excel spreadsheet, or share a link to the results through the portal secure message feature.

Liz selects to share the results.

A modal pops up with the current doctor's name (Dr. Laura Tsunade) prepopulated in the recipient field. She adds a subject and a note, then clicks 'Send'.

Dr. Laura Tsunade receives a new message in her secure messaging inbox in the portal, ready for her to click and view a list of all patients with outstanding YEA / attestations.

Dr. Tsunade can either share the list to her staff or print out forms for each patient (selected or all) for her staff to contact for scheduling.

After completing each patient visit, Dr. Tsunade goes into the portal to complete the attestation.

Team

Supervisor sent out weekly update last night. A teammate asking for how to acces a piece of information.

Consider sending a job aid showing doctors / clinical staff how to complete task on their own.

Clinic

Dr. Tsunade checks in with Liz every couple months to see where they're at with RAF scores.

Contextual Details

Office Girls podcast

Facebook, Instagram, AP news app

HP laptop, 22" external monitor, printer, desk, so-so chair (no lumbar support)

Upon opening her laptop, Outlook icon is bouncing showing 12 new emails, Teams activity feed shows 6 items.

They've conducted 2 other flu clinics at other locations in the past couple months.

3 new messages in the notification bubble, quick glance at offices with low completion of measures (she set preferences to show these at the top).

PiP currently has messaging capability with notification of new messages.

What all will we plan to personalize?

Secure Messaging users have to opt in for using it and receiving messages through it.

Need to create list of use cases for messaging (product team).

Need to be legally compliant in sharing patient information.

May be patient consent considerations - patient consent on form, has to be scanned into record.

She has trained Dr. Tsunade's office 3 times on howe to find these scores, but she keeps asking Liz for help.

V: Another project showed DOB with name to help narrow.

Once this is in CD, we can pull more information into Search; doctor name & patient name support

Option to complete the task in Message modal. Capture the event in Salesforce.

Frontstage

Portal Action

New message push notification through portal mobile app

Portal browser tab shows number of new messages (3)

Dashboard message says "Good morning, Liz"

Messages load instantaneously (preloaded in the background)

Type-ahead database query

Display search results

Display doctor-specific metrics and action options

Display patients with outstanding YEA / attestations

Prepare message to be sent

Alert to message response from Liz

Office / team communication

Capability

News & Alerts

Alerts & Notifications

Patient panel
Registration & Authorization
Alerts & Notificiations

Access DC
KEY USER VALUE DRIVER

See if this capability lives in Link (provider level, not patient)

No existing capability

Access DC
KEY USER VALUE DRIVER

DC
Outlook

No existing capability (saving a view)

Alerts & Notifications

Technology

Mobile phone, podcast app, portal app

Mobile phone, social apps, Gmail

Outlook

Authentication, User Profile Link

What database ties PRM to doctors?

Using OHID through Link

Looking at process for identity confirmation

Need to confirm session management, time-out details, keep active sessions between portals

Use HCP Connect to manage across portals; consider enterprise security policy on timeout

User permissions managed through OHID

Integration in from DC

IDX?
TIN providing access to certain user records

Link uses org structure to manage connections

Clarify lines of what portal owns and what other systems dictate

What are the rules and where are they stored? User profile?

Needs to happen centrally

Doctor panel assigned to Liz, contract status (credentialling), office information (IDX)

Active directory lookup

Restricted to assigned site / clinic

Feed from HCP to Coz…, stored in DW; IDX drives the process (research scalability across CDOs)

Contact info, TIN, contracts, NPIs, credentials, specialties, LOBs, contract status / type / timeline, licenses, DC, Coz…

Doctor information, contract status, office information, patient panel summary, measures summary, outstanding referrals status, capitation summary, contact info, TIN, contract status / type / timeline, NPIs, credentials, specialties, LOBs, licenses

Member records, measures summary, print capability, export to Excel capability, generate link to results capability

Doctor information, attach link (or Excel)
DC allows the user to download the PDF and the user can use Outlook to share with anyone needed

Secure messaging, notifications, Patient panel, measures, print capability, export to Excel capability, generate link to results capability

Secure messaging notifications

Backstage

Actions

Check for new messages and send notifications

Auto-pull summary information for dashboard before 7am local time so it loads quickly

Display metrics for membership (by network, PRM, vendor, MediCal / population / senior), reveal attrition and growth insights

System already knows which providers are in PRMs clinic panel

Check for informaiton updates, status / standing

Check for information updates, status / standing, compile summary detail, generate visualization / charts

Pull appropriate patient list into table view, show status / info for each

Auto-fill form fields, generate URL, confimr status of doctor, retrieve address of doctor

Check for new messages and send notifications

Technology

Members coming in and out is in DW; can show this as well as distribution by demographic, group, plan

Metric for perfomance is in Coz…; conversations needed for getting real-time data, not week-old

DC can complete attestations

Support Process

Log messages, flag urgent messages and alert Ops center, create Salesforece event

Calculate members lost since last view

Log updated information back to full-practice standings

Show available options, hide unavailable options

Log files generated, update all corresponding instances of same data to match across portal

Auto-log event completion in Salesforce

Log message read, alert sender of read status

03 · Resolution

Scale & Adoption.

Within seven months, the foundational architecture was established and the MVP was deployed. By collapsing a fragmented IT ecosystem into a unified operational platform, we achieved a 21% reduction in average time-to-task completion for key clinical actions.

The platform systematically mitigated administrative overhead, allowing provider offices to reallocate capacity from software navigation back to care delivery. It now serves as a scalable framework undergoing continuous capability expansion and market adoption.

Patient overview for the physician

Persona

Primary Physician

Unified Patient Overview: By integrating Quality metrics directly into the PHR viewport, administrative navigation was significantly reduced, contributing directly to the 21% decrease in time-to-task.

Admin Queue

Persona: Front Office

Standardizing the daily queue management protocol across varying clinical office sizes.

Prior Authorization

Staff: Medical Assistant

Isolating the complex Prior Authorization logic into a focused, frictionless submission flow.