Provider portal
Principal UX Designer @ Naviguard from 2021 - 2022
Context
Naviguard is an out of network benefit included with UnitedHealthcare insurance. They exist to help with egregious out of network billing by negotiating with provider’s to lower their bills on behalf of members
No Surprises Act of the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act prevents surprise billing patients causing providers and insurers to have to negotiate rates before balance billing patients.
Naviguard originally launched with their member portal in 2020, with the main use case of member’s bringing forward bills to be negotiated. But with this new legislation going into effect, our use cases shifted to be more provider focused. And with a potentially higher volume of claims coming through, Naviguard saw that there was an opportunity to create a digital communication platform for Naviguard liaisons and out of network providers to negotiate on.
Discover
First step in the design process for the new provider portal was mapping out the process with subject matter experts, product and technology.
Pain points in negotiation with providers today:
Telephonic
Email/Fax sensitive data and documents
Inconsistencies in negotiation
Not meeting case turnaround metrics
Define
Next, I closely partnered with the product owner to define the MVP scope and jobs to be done.
Because the legislation was still being developed and defined we had a lot of twists and turns with this project and went through designing and building out 2 different MVP visions. We had regular standing meetings with different stakeholder groups to understand their shifting needs and presented regularly at steering committees about the risks and pivots we had to take.
MVP version 1: A provider and liaison can only negotiate 1 claim at a time
MVP version 2: A liaison can customize bundles of claims to send to providers to negotiate in bulk
Below are concepts of different bundling concepts for MVP version 2
Design
Once we understood the process and different MVP scopes we moved into high fidelity UI designs.
On top of pivoting requirements and MVP scope, there was also a major re-branding for Naviguard in the middle of the project. I built out an entire pattern library to be used for our member portal and the provider portal that quickly had to be overhauled for the new branding.
I delivered a style guide as well as high fidelity UI screens for every step in the product journey for both MVP versions in desktop, tablet and mobile.
Development & launch
I pair programmed with developers to ensure high quality execution. I also created training materials and setup regular analytics check-ins. Unfortunately we were unable to get provider participation so the provider portal never officially launched.
What’s missing?
Due to the sensitivities of the legislation and negotiation we were unable to get this in front of providers. But had hoped to build a user research panel post-MVP to validate and gather insights.