In the U.S. healthcare ecosystem, payments infrastructure is of paramount importance. For one of the country’s leading healthcare payment facilitators, as transaction volumes surged year over year, cracks began to show in its legacy payment disbursement hub.
Processing over $600 million in claims and facilitating nearly $140 billion in payments annually, the organization relied on a legacy, Windows-based disbursement hub that had served it well for years. But growth exposed its limits.
The challenge wasn’t just modernization. It was modernization without disruption, in a highly regulated environment where downtime, data integrity, and compliance are non-negotiable.
When a Mission-Critical Platform Starts to Strain
The disbursement hub sat at the heart of the customer’s operations, integrating with claims, policy, and accounts payable systems while enabling flexible payment options for healthcare stakeholders.
Over time, several issues began to surface:
- Performance bottlenecks that caused voucher imports of 3,000+ payments to take over five hours, often crashing the system.
- Rapid partner onboarding demands that required new APIs for payment status, image retrieval, and services, without a scalable API foundation.
- Multiple versions of similar APIs, increasing maintenance complexity and developer confusion.
- No clearly defined environments for development, sandbox testing, or production, leading to unpredictable releases.
- Minimal test coverage and automation, resulting in frequent regressions and redeployments.
- Heavy dependence on legacy Clarion code, with expertise concentrated in a single developer, creating continuity and risk concerns.
- Fragmented and inconsistent API documentation, slowing down integrations.
The platform still worked, but it was no longer built for the speed or scale the business required.
A Structured Path from Legacy to Scalable
HealthAsyst was engaged to modernize and stabilize the platform while continuing to support ongoing development and operations. Rather than attempting a disruptive rip-and-replace, the team adopted a measured, layered modernization approach.
Key initiatives included:
1. Rapid API Enablement
Modular, Spring Boot–based services were introduced to expose required APIs quickly. Each API was made test-ready within a week, supported by documentation and defined test scenarios, accelerating partner integrations without destabilizing the core system.
2. Performance Re-architecture
The most critical bottleneck, the payment import process, was re-engineered using multithreading. What once took over five hours was reduced to 10–12 minutes, eliminating crashes during high-volume imports.
3. Codebase and Version Consolidation
Multiple API versions were unified into a single, maintainable codebase using feature-based properties. This reduced duplication, simplified maintenance, and improved long-term scalability.
4. Environment Stabilization
Clear development, sandbox, and production environments were established in collaboration with IT and DevOps teams, enabling predictable releases and parallel development.
5. Quality Engineering and Automation
Automated test cases were built using HealthAsyst’s proprietary automation framework, significantly reducing manual effort and deployment risks while improving release confidence.
6. Bridging Legacy and Modern Skill Sets
A cross-functional team was ramped up on legacy Clarion while simultaneously introducing modern tools such as Redocly for API documentation, reducing dependency risks and improving knowledge continuity.
7. UX and System Modernization
A detailed system analysis documented existing features, while Figma-based redesigns modernized the user experience and accelerated future web application development.
Measurable Outcomes That Moved the Business Forward
The results were tangible, both technically and operationally:
- All partner and vendor APIs delivered on time, enabling faster integrations.
- Voucher processing improved by ~2,400%, eliminating system crashes during imports.
- A consolidated codebase reduced maintenance effort by nearly 200%.
- Stable environments doubled developer productivity through parallel workflows.
- Automated and manual testing reduced bugs and redeployments by 80%.
- Over 300 legacy code vulnerabilities were resolved, strengthening security and compliance.
- Operational effort dropped by 60% through ActiveBatch automation.
- A modernized UX accelerated web application development timelines.
- Most importantly, the customer gained a self-sufficient, skilled team capable of evolving both legacy and modern components of the platform.
Modernization Is All About Readiness
This engagement underscores a critical lesson for healthcare organizations: modernization doesn’t always mean tearing everything down. Often, it means stabilizing what exists, relieving pressure points, and introducing modern capabilities where they create the most immediate impact.
By respecting regulatory constraints, legacy realities, and business continuity, the customer transformed a strained payments platform into a scalable, resilient foundation, ready to support growth without becoming a bottleneck.
In healthcare payments, that readiness can make the difference between keeping up and falling behind.
