From spreadsheets to SaaS — Redesigning how Medical credentialing works
SaaS Platform
Web App
US Healthcare
BilliMD is a platform designed to streamline the credentialing process for healthcare providers and organizations. It simplifies complex workflows like selecting medical enrollments, document management, verification, and compliance with CAQH Provider standards, ensuring providers can meet credentialing requirements efficiently.
Team
2 Designers · 4 Frontend Engineers · 3 Backend Engineers · 1 Quality Analyst · 1 Product Owner · 1 Credentialist Specialist (Golla) · 1 Sales Representative (Patricia)
Role
Product Designer — Research, IA, UI/UX Design
Timeline
Aug 2024 – Jul 2025
Background
Where this story begins
BilliMD is a healthcare credentialing company that helps medical providers get verified by insurance companies so they can practice legally and get reimbursed. Before this project, the entire process was handled manually - Sales Representative Patricia guided providers through insurance plan selection over the phone, while Credentialing Specialist Golla chased documents, verified licenses, and tracked progress through spreadsheets and constant back-and-forth communication.
It worked. But it didn't scale.
The company decided to go digital - to build a SaaS platform that could carry the weight of what these two people were doing manually, for a growing client base. I joined as a Product Designer to help figure out what that actually meant.
The Manual Process — Before Us
01
Sales Representative
Sales reps manually collected provider details, explained insurance plans, built custom quotes, and followed up until the right plan was chosen. Every sale was a conversation.
02
Credentialist Specialist
Credentialing specialists gathered provider documents, verified licenses and certifications by contacting institutions directly, and tracked everything in spreadsheets — one provider at a time.
03
Medical Provider
Providers emailed documents, waited for updates that came through phone calls, had no visibility into where they stood, and often needed hand-holding at every step.
Challenge
Credentialing is slow, opaque, and doesn't scale
Design Problem Statement
How might we digitize the credentialing process so providers can independently track and manage their journey — while enabling BilliMD to serve more clients without proportionally growing headcount?
01
User Challenge
Providers had zero visibility into their credentialing status. No clear next steps, no timeline, no sense of progress. The process felt like submitting documents into a black hole — especially for smaller practices doing this for the first time.
02
Business Challenge
BilliMD's manual process was hitting a ceiling. Every new client added to Patricia and Golla's workload. Credentialing specialists spent most of their time on repetitive follow-ups that could — and should — be automated.
03
Design Challenge
Credentialing is inherently complex — it involves CAQH compliance, multi-state insurance enrollments, identity verification, document management, and multi-stakeholder workflows. Simplifying it without stripping its necessary depth was the core design tension.
04
Trust Challenge
BilliMD's existing clients trusted the people they worked with. Patricia. Golla. The platform needed to feel like guidance, not bureaucracy — preserving the warmth of a human process while delivering the efficiency of software.
Research & Discovery
Understanding the landscape
I led all research and ideation across both products. Our research approach was primarily internal — we didn't have access to a broad panel of external providers. Instead, we worked closely with the people who knew this world best: Patricia and Golla, our in-house doctors, the product owner, and a focused user group of medical providers we tested each iteration with before broader rollout.
These stakeholder sessions, combined with desk research into healthcare UX conventions, CAQH provider standards, and competitive analysis, formed the foundation of our design decisions. Every major design direction was pressure-tested against this group before engineering picked it up.
Research & Testing Methods:
Stakeholder interviews — Patricia (Sales), Golla (Credentialing), in-house doctors, product owner
Desk research — CAQH ProView standards, healthcare UX conventions, credentialing compliance requirement
Competitive analysis — MedTrainer and Modio Health, identifying gaps in their approach for smaller practices
Focused user group testing — iterative sessions with a core group of medical providers after each build cycle
Stakeholder decks — structured presentations used to communicate design decisions and gather structured feedback across product and user group
Key Pain Points
Credentialists and sales representatives spent hours : chasing the same documents repeatedly with multiple rounds of validation and errors due to slow communication.
Providers weren’t frustrated by credentialing itself : but by not knowing what comes next, where they are in the current process and how much more time it will take to get credentialed.
Clinics lacked visibility and accountability : across multiple provider accounts further complicating their work.
Valuable Input I got from Golla and Patricia:
Credentialists spent most of their time on repetitive administrative follow-ups that added no clinical value
Clinics managing multiple providers had no unified visibility across their team's credential statuses
Providers routinely needed hand-holding — the process felt opaque and stressful, especially for smaller practices
Existing users valued the human relationship with BilliMD — the platform needed to preserve that trust
What we found about our competitors
Both MedTrainer and Modio Health cater primarily to large enterprise healthcare systems. Their platforms are powerful but carry a steep learning curve — too complex and overwhelming for individual practitioners and smaller practices.
The gap was clear: no solution existed that balanced the depth of a full credentialing platform with the simplicity that smaller providers actually needed.
User Personas
Working with Patricia, Golla, in-house doctors, and product owner, we identified three distinct user types that the platform needed to serve.
Primary User:
The Individual Medical Provider
A physician or practitioner who need to be credentialed to provide care and receive reimbursement from insurance companies.
Secondary User:
The Clinic Administrator
Oversees credentialing for multiple providers under a hospital or practice. Manages all provider statuses, task assignment, and bulk document management.
Internal User:
The BilliMD Team (Credentialist)
Internal users who needed admin tools to oversee client progress, leave notes, assign tasks, and flag issues without switching to email.
Guiding Principles
Before any wireframe was drawn, we defined the principles that would keep every decision grounded especially when navigating between user pain points and BilliMD's values.
01
Guidance, not bureaucracy
Break CAQH's 7+ stages into what's needed right now not the full weight of the process at once.
02
Transparency at every step
A provider shouldn't have to call BilliMD to find out where their application stands.
03
Automate the chase
Reminders, expiry alerts, and missing document flags — handled by the system before anyone picks up the phone.
04
Trust through verification
Medical licenses, DEA certificates, identity documents. Every touchpoint should handle sensitive data in a secured way.
05
Consider practice sizes
A solo physician and a clinic admin managing 15 providers shouldn't feel like they're using different tools.
06
No silent failures
Every upload, form submission, and enrollment change surfaces immediately with clear next steps, not just a status label.
The Pivot
We started with
the wrong first step
The first product we built wasn't the credentialing platform. It was a Custom Pricing Portal (CPP) — a self-checkout tool that let healthcare providers independently browse insurance plans, configure their practice details, get a custom price quote, and check out — all without talking to a sales rep.
The idea was logical: if we could automate the front-end insurance selection process (Patricia's job), we'd free up BilliMD's sales team and give providers more control. We designed it fully, built it, and launched it to a focused group of real users.
What the CPP did
Allowed providers to select their practice details: size, location, specialty to get relevant plan options
Surfaced tailored insurance plan recommendations across HMO, PPO, Medicare/Medicaid, and more
Generated a custom price quote based on number of providers and practice locations
Completed with checkout and DocuSign agreement: end-to-end, no human required
Step 1
Custom Plan Builder
Provider selects practice type, size, and states of operation.
Step 2
Insurance Selection
Browse and choose from 1,500+ insurance plans relevant to their practice.
Step 3
Plan Selection
Choose from 4 support plan tiers: Monitor Plus, Basic, Pro, or Elite.
Step 4
Basic Info
Provide contact and billing information for account creation.
Step 5
Custom Quote
Review a personalized price breakdown based on all selections.
Step 6
Payment
Complete purchase through secure checkout.
Step 7
DocuSign
Sign the Master Service Agreement — account activated.
The Pivot
The platform was built. Users had access. It didn't stick.
After launching to our focused user group, the feedback came back clearly — and it wasn't about the design. Insurance selection isn't where the credentialing journey starts. Our users were already familiar with the physical, relationship-based process of choosing a plan through Patricia. They trusted it, they understood it, and automating it didn't solve a pain they actually felt. The CPP solved a business efficiency problem, not a user problem.
The product owner and our focused user group made it clear: the credentialing platform itself — the document management, tracking, and verification — was the real problem to solve first. Insurance selection would eventually be integrated there, not live as a standalone product.
What the CPP taught us
The CPP wasn't a failure: it was the most important alignment exercise we ran. Going through the full design and build cycle revealed exactly what our users valued and what they found disruptive.
It also gave us a clear mental model for insurance selection that we later integrated directly into the credentialing platform. So the learning wasn't lost, it was absorbed.
Don't automate what users aren't asking to do themselves. The gap was in credentialing visibility, not purchasing.
Test sequencing, not just features. The CPP flow worked launching it before a credentialing home didn't.
Stakeholder feedback loops are essential. Our focused user group saved us from doubling down on the wrong product.
Designing the Platform
Building the credentialing platform from zero
With the CPP learnings in hand, we redirected to what users actually needed: a place to manage their entire credentialing journey end-to-end. This was a much bigger, much harder design problem and it was being built from scratch.
I led the research and ideation, and co-designed every feature of the platform alongside another designer. Every design decision was continuously tested with our focused user group through stakeholder presentations and live product sessions.
Goals & Resources
6+
Core platform modules to be designed end-to-end from scratch
4×
Faster onboarding — from a 60-minute process to under 15 minutes
3+
User types served: individual providers, clinic admins, BilliMD team
11
People across design, engineering, QA, and product working in sync
Information Architecture
Credentialing involves multiple interconnected steps: forms, documents, verifications, and status tracking. I mapped these operations into an intuitive modular structure for the convenience of design team as well as backend engineers.
Deciding what to build
Every feature went through the same filter: does this solve a real user problem, does it serve BilliMD's business goals, and can we actually build it within our MVP scope? These weren't design decisions made in Figma — they were made in rooms with the product owner, engineers, and credentialing experts, then brought into Figma.
Four Roles. One Platform.
One of the core design challenges was building a single platform that could serve fundamentally different users without creating confusion. Each role sees a tailored experience.
Admin
Organization Owner / Head Provider
Purchases and manages the BilliMD plan. Controls user access, tracks enrollment statuses across all providers under their account, and interfaces with BilliMD's team.
User
Individual Healthcare Provider
Fills out their credentialing information, uploads documents, tracks personal progress, and completes identity verification. The core user the platform was designed for.
Credentialist (BilliMD side - Admin)
BilliMD Internal Team
Credentialists (Golla) who review provider progress, assign documents, leave comments, send custom notifications, and flag issues — all within the platform.
Managing Account
Delegated Access to an Assistant
A user given access to manage another provider's account on their behalf: with full platform access except account settings, enabling practices to delegate administrative work.
Final Design
The Credentialing
Platform — Feature by Feature
A single, unified platform that turns what was once a phone-and-spreadsheet operation into a transparent, trackable, and automated credentialing experience.
Feature 01
Home Dashboard
The dashboard is the command centre of the credentialing journey. It gives providers a real-time overview of their credentialing progress, pending actions, and active alerts — turning what was previously opaque into something clear and motivating.
Instead of static lists, the dashboard is a live system where every module feeds data into a unified visual summary. Progress is visible. Actions are obvious. Nothing is buried.
Feature 02
Information Feature
Credentialing forms are notoriously long and complex. CAQH ProView alone spans dozens of sections across personal info, specialties, practice locations, hospital affiliations, disclosures, and more.
The Information feature breaks this into structured, digestible steps — with the option to import directly from CAQH, auto-filling large sections of the form. Each section is validated in context so errors are caught early, not at submission.
Feature 03
Insurance Selection
The insurance selection journey from the CPP was rebuilt and integrated directly into the credentialing platform — now as a native feature rather than a standalone product. This is where the CPP learnings paid off.
Providers can browse 1,500+ insurance plans, select enrollments, and track their processing status — with a queue system showing which month each insurance is being processed, and real-time visibility on blocked, in-progress, and completed enrollments. What once took a 30-minute call with Patricia now takes under 5 minutes.
Feature 04
Documents
Previously, credentialing specialists chased documents over endless email threads — requesting the same files multiple times, dealing with wrong formats, expired certificates, and missed deadlines.
The documents feature consolidates everything into a structured, status-driven table — Requested, Pending, Approved, Rejected. Providers upload once, see exactly what's needed, and get notified when something expires or needs attention. Admins can assign document requirements and review uploads without leaving the platform.
Version 1 of the design: Not continued due less modern and disorganized in terms of information.
Version 2 of the design: One of the iterations
Feature 05
BilliMD - Admin View
For BilliMD's internal team: Golla, Patricia, and other credentialing experts - the Admin View is a control centre for their entire client base. Admins can select individual client accounts, review their credentialing progress, assign documents, leave comments on specific sections, send custom notifications, and flag accounts for review.
Everything Golla did via email and spreadsheets now lives in one place. The admin view transforms BilliMD's internal process as much as the provider-facing platform does.
Impact & Outcomes
Delivering real value for users and business
60→15
Minutes for provider onboarding — a 4× reduction in time to start credentialing
∞
Scalability: BilliMD can now handle significantly more clients with the same internal team.
30→5
Minutes for insurance selection — replaces a full sales call with a self-serve flow
0→1
Credentialing platform built from scratch. BilliMD went from a service business to a software business
💙
For Healthcare Providers
Clear, real-time visibility into credentialing progress — no more emailing for status updates
Structured, guided information flows that reduce overwhelm and errors
Document uploads in one place — with instant feedback on what's missing or rejected
Self-serve insurance selection integrated into the credentialing flow
💼
For BilliMD
Automated what Patricia and Golla were doing manually — freeing them for higher-value work
Removed the headcount bottleneck — client growth no longer requires proportional team growth
Built a unified SaaS foundation that connects sales, insurance, payments, and credentialing
Created an admin layer that gives the internal team full visibility without context-switching
Reflection
What I'd takeforward
01
Stakeholder testing is real research
Our focused user group of medical providers, tested iteratively after each build, gave us feedback that no desk research could have. The CPP pivot came from them, not from us. Building that loop early saved months of work.
02
Complexity demands collaboration
Designing a healthcare platform from scratch with multi-stakeholder workflows, and zero legacy code, required constant alignment with engineering, the product owner, and QA. Weekly syncs and stakeholder decks were non-negotiable.
01
Designing from scratch is hard. Designing from scratch in healthcare is harder.
Every decision had downstream consequences: on compliance, on trust, on the real people trying to practice medicine. That weight made this project the most challenging as well as interesting