AthenaHealth · 2023 | 2-3 min read
Encouraging Prompt Medical Bill Payment
In the summer of 2023, I joined AthenaHealth as a UX Design Intern, working closely with design, product, engineering to develop a new platform within their healthcare software suite.
One of AthenaHealth’s core offerings is medical billing — enabling healthcare providers to charge for their services and allowing insurers and patients to make payments through its cloud-based system.
By 2023, the growing number of outstanding medical bills had become a pressing issue. As the company prepared to launch a dedicated billing portal, I explored ways to nudge users toward more timely payments.
I focused on improving how the system guides payer actions at critical decision points — clarifying what to do, when, and why.
This includes 1 highlighting invoice urgency to help users quickly identify pending or overdue bills, and 2 introducing messenger for payment adjudication communication.
3 months wasn’t enough to ship and see the full impact of my work in such a complex, compliance-heavy domain like healthcare. However, after the portal launched in 2024 alongside other new features, AthenaHealth saw a 30% reduction in client payment cycles.
I’m genuinely grateful to my mentors at Athenahealth — Robert, Julie, and Marco — for their warm onboarding and thoughtful guidance throughout this project.