Privilege Request Form

Clinical privileging is the process by which hospitals and health systems authorize providers to perform specific procedures. It’s legally required, highly regulated, and directly tied to patient safety.

The existing privilege request workflow at symplr had grown organically over years of feature additions. It was dense, non-linear, and required providers to navigate multiple disconnected screens to complete a single request. Credentialers spent significant time fielding support calls from confused providers.

I owned this redesign end to end — from discovery through final design handoff.

The core failure wasn’t a single bad screen — it was an absence of structure. Providers had no sense of where they were in the process, what was left to do, or what the criteria for each privilege actually meant.

• No clear progression. The workflow didn’t communicate steps. Providers couldn’t tell if they were 20% done or 80% done.
• Criteria buried or missing. Providers were selecting privileges without understanding the board certification and training requirements they were agreeing to meet.
• Context switching. Supporting information (locations, documents, comments) lived in separate screens, breaking the selection flow.
• No error prevention. Problems surfaced at submission — not at the point where they could be avoided.

I started by mapping the full lifecycle of a privilege request — not just the provider’s experience, but the credentialer’s review process and the downstream compliance requirements that shaped what had to be captured.

From there I worked with credentialers and medical staff office coordinators to identify the real failure points: where did providers get stuck? Where did credentialers get the most error-correction work? Where were requests returned for missing information?

The insight that shaped everything: providers weren’t selecting privileges recklessly — they simply didn’t know what they were agreeing to. Making criteria visible and legible before selection was the most impactful change I could make.

The redesign reorganized the entire workflow into four explicit steps with a persistent progress indicator:

• Step 1 — Review Criteria. Providers read their specialty-specific criteria before touching a single privilege. Board certification requirements, training standards, and experience minimums are presented clearly, not buried in tooltips.
• Step 2 — Select Core Privileges. A scannable table lets providers request, defer, or waive each privilege. Side panels surface descriptions, locations, documents, and comments in context — without navigating away.
• Step 3 — Select Special Privileges. The same interaction pattern carries through for special privileges. Consistency across steps reduced the learning curve.
• Step 4 — Review & Sign. A complete summary before signature. Error states flag missing items at the point of review — not after submission.

Criteria before selection, always. Every other design pattern I considered let providers jump straight to selection. But without reading criteria first, the selection is legally meaningless — providers are attesting they meet requirements they haven’t read. Step 1 is non-negotiable.

Side panels, not navigation. The temptation was to link out to detail screens. Instead I used an expandable side panel so providers could read a description, check locations, or review a document without losing their place in the table. Context preservation was central to reducing drop-offs.

Consistent interaction pattern across steps. Steps 2 and 3 use the same table + panel pattern deliberately. The first time is learning; the second time is fluency. Providers who complete Step 2 should feel capable in Step 3 without a new mental model.

Error prevention over error correction. The Review & Sign step flags missing or incomplete items before the provider signs. But I also surfaced inline warnings during selection — catching problems at the moment of choice rather than at submission.

In compliance-bound workflows, the most important UX decision is often sequencing — not visual design. Getting providers to engage with criteria before selection wasn’t a UI challenge, it was an information architecture challenge. The form structure itself was the intervention.

I also learned how much healthcare UX depends on understanding regulatory context. The legal and accreditation requirements that govern privileging aren’t constraints on the design — they’re inputs to it. The best solutions came from understanding why those requirements exist, not just what they are.

• Usability testing with providers across specialties — the criteria review step in particular needs validation that different specialties can parse their requirements clearly.
• Measuring completion rates and support ticket volume against the legacy flow.
• Exploring a mobile-responsive variant for providers who complete forms on tablet or phone between patient visits.
• Investigating whether privilege descriptions could be surfaced inline during selection rather than requiring a panel open.