Sr. Design Strategist / Consultant, AWS WWCO ProServe, Gen AI Specialty Practice
Sr. UX Consultant, TATA Consultancy Services
McKesson Pharmaceuticals
Concentra
Redesigning case management systems to enhance efficiency, unify disparate systems, and break down monolithic architectures for improved performance.
This initiative with Concentra aimed to modernize a suite of aging systems by dismantling legacy monoliths and transitioning toward a modular, security-aware architecture that improved both interoperability and system resilience. In the world of medical billing, data integrity and protected health information (PHI) security are critical — and maintaining consistency across fragmented platforms has long been a point of friction.This was no minor undertaking: the project demanded robust security measures, high system availability, and an architecture that could support compliance without compromising usability.
To ground our design in real-world needs, we kicked off with a three-day onsite workshop, bringing together stakeholders and SMEs across four critical workflows: Occusource (patient intake), billing & finance, patient checkout, and referral management. Through collaborative journey mapping and feature definition exercises, we worked closely with subject matter experts to unpack each system’s constraints, dependencies, and pain points. This intensive discovery laid the foundation for a secure, role-conscious redesign, ensuring the new platform was not only modern and modular — but also built with compliance, traceability, and data protection at its core.
The screens displayed below are the culmination of weeks of dedicated effort in identifying the essential requirements of the system and arranging them in a logical flow. This meticulous process was aimed at effectively narrating the sequence of actions within the system, ensuring that each step is clearly understood and efficiently executed.
With McKesson Pharmaceuticals, the scope of work mirrored earlier initiatives in scale, but the design challenge was considerably more complex. The existing system was highly unstable, riddled with workarounds that caseworkers had developed just to survive the day-to-day. Its outdated interface, reminiscent of Windows '95, buried essential data under as many as seven nested layers of parent-child relationships — a structure that not only frustrated users but increased the risk of data entry errors and security blind spots.
As we began redesigning the system from the ground up, I led with one of my core design principles: change should feel familiar. In high-stakes environments like healthcare operations, even positive change can trigger resistance if it strays too far from ingrained workflows. Preserving just enough of the user’s mental model was critical — not just for adoption, but for preventing a fallback to unsafe or unsupported workarounds.
The goal wasn’t just modernization — it was transformation with stability, data clarity, and secure access in mind. By introducing a cleaner, flatter architecture and surfacing critical information more intuitively, we laid the groundwork for a system that was not only easier to use but far more resilient, auditable, and risk-aware.
The introductory screen featured above has been designed to facilitate easy access to patient data for case reviews. A notable enhancement I introduced is the tabs at the top of the screen, which allow users to have multiple cases open simultaneously. This capability was not available in their previous system and represents a significant improvement, offering increased efficiency and flexibility in managing patient information.
The next logical step in the workflow is to access the Physician details related to the case. This section consolidates all relevant information about the healthcare provider, ensuring seamless integration and quick access within the overall case management process.
This is the clinical section of the case management system, which outlines all pertinent details regarding procedures and tests recommended by the physician. It serves as a centralized hub for all clinical data, ensuring that healthcare professionals can easily access and review necessary medical information to make informed decisions.
When you click into one of the case files, you are presented with a comprehensive array of details about the patient's case. Previously, this information was not centralized but scattered across different parts of the system. This dispersion led to inefficiencies and considerable time wastage, as patients waited while case managers navigated through the system to gather necessary details. The new design consolidates all relevant information into a single, accessible location, streamlining the process and significantly reducing wait times for patients.
This section serves as a comprehensive repository for all documents related to the patient's case. It features an intuitive system that allows caseworkers to seamlessly integrate and associate documentation with specific case details. This functionality enhances the accessibility and organization of related data, making it straightforward for caseworkers to retrieve and review documents pertinent to each case.
The Patient Assistance Program is an initiative either operated directly by or in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies, designed to offer medications at no cost or at a reduced price to low-income individuals who are not eligible for other forms of insurance or assistance, such as Medicaid, Medicare, or AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs). Although this stage of the process is optional and tailored to individual patient needs, it is a crucial component that must be addressed before a case can be officially closed. This ensures that all potential aid options are explored to support the patient's healthcare needs effectively.
In conclusion, the projects with Concentra and McKesson Pharmaceuticals marked significant progress in transforming vulnerable legacy systems into modern, secure, and efficient case management platforms. At Concentra, we focused on decoupling monolithic back-ends to enable cleaner system communication and support scalable, compliance-ready architecture. At McKesson, the challenge was even more pronounced — stabilizing a fragile environment and centralizing fragmented, deeply nested data structures that had become a barrier to both efficiency and risk mitigation.
In both cases, we prioritized user-centered design while embedding secure defaults, role-based access control, and audit-ready workflows. By maintaining key elements of familiarity, we reduced training overhead and discouraged fallback to insecure workarounds — a critical move for organizations managing sensitive patient data.
These efforts not only streamlined internal operations but also strengthened data integrity, improved caseworker efficiency, and ultimately helped deliver faster, more trustworthy care to patients. The success of these initiatives illustrates how thoughtful, security-conscious UX design can elevate operational performance without compromising regulatory alignment or system resilience — a must in today’s healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.
