This is a hypothetical scenario, where an electronic medical record company is faced with additional regulatory requirements (additional data in e-prescriptions, real-time benefit checks, PA steps) and customer demands.
First let’s ask some questions:
- How many other customers have raised this request?
- What’s the contract impact of these customers?
- How likely do we think we are to them churning if we don’t meet these needs?
- What does success look like for this customer?
- What constraints do we face in delivering it? (3rd party data providers, their timelines for giving us access, engineer capacity, QA)
- Who actually chases PAs, and what does it cost them today?
At this point we have a tension, pull forward some work for a specific customer vs. keeping the development plan.
A few options and tradeoffs:
- Build it early. This might not be feasible depending on how the 3rd party data provider can manage certification slots.
- Continue with roadmap plan. Low risk and aligned to 2028, but nothing for the customer in the near term.
- Continue with plan and evaluate light lift interim. The lift would be a PA status view that could be manually updated, maybe enhance with additional data if the API provided that. A spike with the eng lead confirms that’s an option.
Evaluate the above options on: technical feasibility, tech debt, customer satisfaction, patient safety risk.
Based on the above : Option 3, contingent on the spike. If there’s no safe interim, fall back to option 2 with a dated plan for the customer. I’d change course if the customer says 3 months is a hard ultimatum or the 3rd party provider says they can’t provide us a cert.
Success metric: Time spent chasing PA status, + status accuracy.
Communicate
| Audience | Message |
|---|---|
| Customer | What you get at month 3, what comes after, and why |
| PM / eng | Recommendation, risks, spike scope |
| Prescribers and PA coordinators | What changes in their workflow and when |
| Clinical and QA | Safety review scope and timing, before design is locked |
| Design | Handling “no status available” for insurers that don’t respond electronically |
| Account managers | One consistent story for the customer |
| Leadership | Roadmap tradeoff and renewal risk |
At the end the path of delivering a lightweight version at month 3, sequence the work dependent on the certification slots, align everything to the 2028 requirement, and tell each audience exactly what changes for them and when – is the path I’d choose going forward!
