Challenge
Six clinics, six versions of paper intake, three different ways referrals moved between providers. The EHR (OSCAR) held the clinical record, but the operational layer — intake, document collection, referral status, patient comms — lived in inboxes, fax queues, and spreadsheets. Front-desk staff spent more time on data entry and chase emails than on patients.
Approach
We started with a 4-week discovery: 12 interviews across clinical and ops staff, an audit of the EHR integration story, and a written architecture for a patient platform that sat between the patient and the EHR rather than trying to replace it. Build was phased — intake first, document handling second, referral coordination third — each phase shipped to a single pilot clinic before going wider.
What we built
A patient portal for self-service intake, document upload, and appointment management. An internal clinical operations app for referral triage and tracking. FHIR integration with OSCAR for the parts that belonged in the EHR. Twilio-powered patient comms for reminders and document chase. A small AI extraction layer (with human-in-the-loop) for parsing inbound referrals and insurance documents into structured fields.
Results
Patient intake time dropped from 12–18 minutes to under 4. Referral SLA hit rate moved from 'we don't measure it' to 92%+. Front-desk staff reclaimed approximately 120 hours per week across the six clinics — redirected to patient-facing work rather than headcount cuts. The platform is now on a Yab support retainer for ongoing improvements and integrations.