I went straight to the data model and kind of forgot to ask clarifying questions first, which I regretted pretty quickly.
Start by clarifying functional and non-functional requirements, such as patient billing, insurance claims, and multi-location support. Then propose a high-level architecture with separate services for billing, payments, and claims, and dive into data modeling and trade-offs.
Pro tip: Emphasize data consistency and idempotency in payment processing, as these are critical in healthcare billing where errors can have legal and financial repercussions.
Ask questions to understand the scope: patient volume, insurance integration, payment methods, reporting needs, and compliance (e.g., HIPAA).
Outline main components: patient management, billing service, payment gateway, insurance claims processor, and reporting. Consider a microservices architecture for scalability.
Design core entities: Patient, Appointment, Invoice, Payment, InsuranceClaim. Define relationships and consider multi-tenancy for two locations.
Detail the billing process: generating invoices from appointments, submitting claims, processing payments, and handling denials. Discuss idempotency and consistency.
Discuss trade-offs like SQL vs NoSQL, synchronous vs asynchronous processing, and how to scale for growth. Mention monitoring and auditing.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.