Utilization Management Strategies

Developing scalable interventions to optimize a 1,000+ clinician workforce across cost, quality, and provider satisfaction

Project Type

User Research, Planning, Strategy, Lean Methods

Length

6 months (August 2023 - January 2024)

Role/Teams

Operations (👋🏽), Data Science, Business Analytics, and Clinical Leadership


Company Background

Lyra Health is the leading provider of Workforce Mental Health benefits, available to more than 17 million people globally. Lyra is transforming access to life-changing mental health care using AI-powered provider matching, personalized support, and a digital platform to deliver evidence-based support for individuals and teams.

Situation

Lyra Health's rapid growth created compounding workforce challenges: rising costs from client no-shows and cancellations, inconsistent clinician utilization across geographies, and a provider workforce that needed to scale without sacrificing satisfaction. As an operations lead, I was asked to build a multi-year strategy to address these issues systematically.

Key Drivers

Customer Satisfaction

Larger customers needed tailored services and needs including specific cost outcomes in their SLAs

Patient Satisfaction

At our core we needed to ensure we put our clients first and maintain/improve satisfaction levels


Approach

Results

Industry Trends

We wanted to rapidly test and iterate to meet industry trends in mental health and healthcare

I convened a cross-functional coalition spanning People Operations, Legal, Clinical, Product, Design, Data Science, and Strategy, building stakeholder alignment before building solutions. Using a problem-framing methodology, I facilitated the group toward a shared north star:

"How might we optimize our provider network to enhance both business performance and provider satisfaction by 2024?"

Anchoring on both performance and satisfaction as dual KPIs was intentional. It ensured that cost-focused interventions didn't come at the expense of the clinician experience, a critical tension in this space.

From there, I developed dashboards and data visualizations to give teams real-time visibility into progress, enabling faster decision-making and stakeholder communication across leadership levels.

What we built

Working in agile sprint cycles, I organized dedicated strike teams around content areas, allowing subject-matter experts to move quickly within their domains. Key initiatives included:

  • A manager metrics dashboard to surface clinician performance flags early

  • Development-driven interventions focused on behavior change and workflow improvement

  • A modified variable compensation model to address low-demand regions

  • Clearly defined swim lanes to reduce ambiguity across teams

  • A redesigned provider onboarding funnel from intake to fully-booked status

  • Intelligent forecasting to guide cross-licensing and recruitment

Each initiative was evaluated continuously, with teams iterating, sunsetting, or expanding based on outcomes. This reflected a deliberate commitment to continuous process improvement over rigid planning.


98% of clinicians meeting or exceeding performance management ratings after 6 months

REFLECTION

15% reduction in provider cancellations and client no shows

15 point increase in staff NPS and satisfaction scores


This project sharpened my ability to work at the intersection of data, people, and systems. Leading without direct authority, driving alignment across clinical, legal, product, and executive stakeholders, required the same core skills I bring to design program management: translating ambiguous problems into structured frameworks, building trust across disciplines, and keeping teams oriented around shared outcomes even as conditions shifted.

The biggest lesson was knowing when to act on imperfect data rather than waiting for certainty. In a high-growth environment, the cost of delay often outweighed the cost of iteration.

Supply and Demand Variability

With the rise of remote-work we needed to address clinician availability across the globe

Workforce Planning

It was an imperative that our workforce was optimized and ready for upcoming growth and changes

Growth Pains

Despite building for scale, we were experiencing constraints in staffing and in our operational processes

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