Portfolio

Mission of Mercy Health Clinics

Mission of Mercy is a large-scale, two-day charitable healthcare event offering free dental, hearing, and vision services to hundreds of uninsured and underinsured patients. The Vision Services section operates as a fully functional pop-up eye clinic, requiring coordination of clinical staff, imaging equipment, electronic medical record access, optical services, and volunteer teams—often under tight space, time, and staffing constraints.

In both 2024 and 2025, I served as the primary point of contact and section lead for Vision Services, acting simultaneously as program manager, operations lead, and clinical workflow designer.

Role & Scope

In 2024, this work was my primary project shortly after onboarding; by 2025, I led the event as the full program manager for UPMC’s mobile vision clinics and remote access initiatives, including device trials supporting ophthalmology telehealth.

  • End-to-end operational leadership for the Vision Services section
  • Clinical workflow design and triage protocol development
  • Recruitment, onboarding, scheduling, and management of 175+ volunteers, including students, interns, and clinical staff
  • Development of training materials and volunteer documentation
  • Coordination with Mission of Mercy operations team
  • Equipment delivery, setup, teardown, and electrical planning—including integration of the mobile eyeVan
  • Real-time crowd management, patient flow control, and issue resolution for 12-hour event days
  • Troubleshooting EPIC access and permissions across shared devices provided by Mission of Mercy
  • Media engagement and relationship-building with community partners supporting the event
  • Determining patient intake cutoffs to balance patient access with quality and teardown timelines

Metrics

Learning & System Evolution

Challenges Identified (2024)

The 2024 event surfaced several critical constraints:

  • Patient flow bottlenecks, particularly at optical services and comprehensive exams
  • Imaging congestion, as most patients requiring comprehensive exams also require retinal imaging
  • Confusion among patients regarding the next clinical steps
  • Digital patient tracking system failure within the first hour
  • Late volunteer onboarding and inconsistent communication
  • Underutilized clinic space limiting throughput and waiting capacity

When the tracking system failed, we pivoted immediately to whiteboards and paper tracking to maintain continuity of care—ensuring patients were still seen safely and efficiently.

Interventions & Redesign (2025)

Using feedback from patients, volunteers, and internal debriefs, I led a series of targeted improvements for 2025:

Clinical Workflow & Triage

  • Created a separate imaging area to relieve congestion in comprehensive exams
  • Increased ophthalmic technician staffing for imaging and triage
  • Implemented an exam passport signed at each station to clarify patient progression and reduce confusion
  • Introduced a five-minute limit for glasses selection to improve fairness and throughput

Operations & Space Design

  • Increased and reorganized waiting areas across stations
  • Expanded clinic footprint within the convention center
  • Built dedicated checkout area in a previously underutilized space

Volunteer Systems

  • Launched volunteer recruitment earlier than in 2024
  • Updated information architecture of volunteer registration portal
  • Distributed training materials and role guides well in advance
  • Assigned section leads to manage breaks, questions, and escalation
  • Built and managed a two-shift schedule spanning 5:00 AM–5:00 PM across both days

Tracking & Metrics

  • Replaced fragile digital tracking with a clipboard stacking system, improving reliability and real-time visibility
  • Improved service quantification, enabling cost estimation of delivered free care

Partnerships & Innovation

  • Continued partnership with Topcon, with a more targeted approach in 2025
  • Trialed devices aligned with long-term integration into mobile vision clinics and teleophthalmology workflows

Mission of Mercy demonstrated both the power and the limits of large-scale pop-up clinics. While the event delivers extraordinary access, feedback and observation highlighted that quality of care, provider familiarity, and sustainability improve in established clinical environments.

  • Year-over-year impact:
    • Nearly 100 additional patients served
    • Improved patient clarity, flow, and experience
    • Higher volunteer satisfaction and confidence
    • Stronger continuity of care through structured referrals

Patients from both events were referred for follow-up care as needed, including uninsured patients. In 2025, we established Community Vision Day as a formal referral pathway, allowing patients to access low- or no-cost specialty follow-ups beyond Mission of Mercy.

Insights from Mission of Mercy directly informed a strategic shift toward:

  • Quarterly Community Vision Days
  • Expanded care delivery within the UPMC Vision Institute
  • Replicable workflows supporting mobile clinics and telehealth programs

This work reflects my approach as a program leader and systems builder: leading with dignity under pressure, translating chaos into resilient workflows, and designing models of care that can scale without compromising patient experience or clinical quality.